00:03
Frank Wolinski: Water is very scarce in Southern
California. A lot of the water has to be
00:07
imported in from very long distances. Without water life would be completely
00:12
different than it is now. Some of the simple
things that we do in the morning such as
00:17
take a shower, brush our teeth, have cup
coffee those simple things wouldn't be
00:20
there. My name is Franklin Wolinkski, I'm the
Operations and Feld Services Manager
00:26
for the Vista Irrigation District. I'm
responsible for making sure that water
00:29
gets from source to the to the customer's
tap. Our customers expect that when they
00:35
turn on tap the water's going to be
there, that it's going to be safe, it's going to be
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potable, and also it's going to
be there 24-7, 365. Currently the
00:44
District has two sources of water. We
have our own local supply at Lake
00:48
Henshaw and the other we get from the
state water project in Northern
00:52
California as well as the Colorado River.
Over the years the Vista Irrigation
00:56
District has had to adapt to meet the
ever-changing needs of a growing
00:59
population within the community of Vista.
The district currently serves a
01:02
population of approximately 128,000
people. We have approximately 435 miles
01:07
of pipeline, 12 water storage reservoirs
and 17 different pressure zones. We
01:12
monitor verious pressure reducing facilities
and we have approximately 30 remote
01:17
sites that we monitor these through. Steve Wuerth: We
use programmable automation controllers
01:22
to bring data into a central location
for viewing and for controlling purposes.
01:25
The well locations throughout the
ranch are very remote. They subject to an
01:30
enormous amount of heat in the summer
times and and freezing temperatures in
01:33
the winter. Wolinksi: Managing all of these remote
sites that we have without automation
01:37
control system would be near impossible.
So ,we got our start with Opto 22 in the early
01:42
nineties through our SCADA integrator
IDAC West. Alan LeVezu:IDAC West has been an
01:47
integrator for the Vsta Irrigation District
for almost as long as we've been in
01:53
The first system we put in was almost 20
years ago. It was a an older Opto 22 system
01:59
and that they needed to upgrade that to
the the current ethernet technology. So
02:04
instead of deciding to do everything all
at once they figured out a layered
02:10
approach to take some of the key sites
and update that one at a time. And, using
02:15
the Opto 22 hardware we were able to
talk to the old sites and the new sites
02:20
and as we did each site we moved it over
to the new technology. Wolinksi: One of the
02:26
advantages of Opto 22 products is that they've
always enabled backwards compatibility.
02:30
You know with the help of IDAC West
we were able to phase all this process in
02:34
migrating through various generations.
This is something that over the years has
02:38
saved the district money and that's
something we've been able to pass on to
02:44
LeVezu: The Vista Irrigation system has systems
out in the field that are very
02:48
intelligent. If something breaks down
they decide what they're going to do out
02:52
in the field. If there's a communications
drop from one point to another that's a
02:57
key both points decide based on the
logic we've built in what to do. Wolinksi: Distributed
03:04
intelligence allows our remote sites
to basically run autonomously. LeVezu: If there's
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a disaster of some kind, whether it's an
earthquake or a major fire, and the
03:14
distributed portion of the control goes
down - as in the Masters go down, the sites
03:19
will continue working. And, they'll still
be able to fill the fire trucks so they
03:22
can put out the fires and keep as much
water going, and in some cases if there's
03:28
a break in the line it will
automatically stop to prevent the water
03:35
Wolinksi: You know it's a it's our job to
distribute water 24 hours a day 365 days
03:39
a year. To bring water to our customers
today we're leveraging technology to do