Weather Stations “Greatly Simplify” Wastewater Treatment Data Reporting & Plant Efficiency
Bloomington-Normal Water Reclamation District has an impressive track record. In addition to 12 Gold Peak Performance Awards from the NACWA, they won the 2018 Plant of the Year award from the Illinois Association of Water Pollution Control Operators. The awards recognize the plant’s commitment to safety, permit compliance, cleanliness and maintenance, and operations staff knowledge.
Among their efforts to improve plant efficiency and maintenance, the district purchased five Orion™ Weather Stations to monitor on-site conditions at the district’s two water treatment sites.
“In the past we would manually record and
enter weather data,” Director of Operations Jake Callahan explained. “We first
learned about Columbia Weather Systems in a featured article in one of the
Operator magazines. This is where we originally learned about the equipment and
its capability of interfacing with SCADA systems. We wanted to have
weather data trended and monitored on the District’s SCADA system for
information purposes to assist with data analysis and anticipating the impact a
rain event would have on flows with real time data.” 
One of five Orion™ Weather Stations installed at the plants.
Jake continued, “The District’s service area covers two watersheds. We have two treatment plants that we own, operate, and maintain which are about 15 miles apart. Both treatment plants have weather stations installed in addition to two of our pump stations.
"With the Columbia Weather Systems (equipment), we were able to automate the weather data interface and data entry into our data management software. The data is used for reporting to the regulatory Agency as they now look for information on storm duration, intensity and total precipitation.
"Having the weather data fully integrated and trended on the District’s SCADA system has greatly simplified the reporting requirement aspect of managing weather data . . . Once the first weather station was configured the others were able to be integrated fairly easily.”
Learn
more about how industrial weather stations improve water treatment operations
at the links below:
Wastewater Treatment Application Page
TPO Article Featuring Columbia Weather Systems
Orion 420 Weather Station Information
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