About the author:
Taylor Williams is technical writer for Mission Communications. Williams can be reached at [email protected].
Many utilities throughout North America trust supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems to monitor their water and wastewater applications. A portion of these utilities are from French-speaking Canada, therefore, providing a means for them to complete work in their native language is beneficial.
Mission Communications has developed a web portal that can be viewed in French with metric scaling. Notification texts and phone calls can be configured to be completed in French as well. To further this offering, sales and technical support staff who are fluent in French can help customers troubleshoot system issues.
Monitoring
Sainte-Thècle is a rural, small village in the Quebec province of Canada with an area of 83 sq miles. The village’s public works department also provides clean water to a portion of residents of the neighboring village, Hervey-Jonction. The application uses a 1-million-liter tank (approximately 250,000 gal) and moves nearly 200,000 gal of water per day.
Because the area is a popular tourist destination for camping in warm-weather months, water consumption in the summer is 1.5 times greater than it is in the winter.
Jean-Yves Piché, Sainte-Thècle public works director, has worked in the public works department for 25 years and has been in his current position for the last 10 years. He performs many of the duties required to maintain the village by himself, including repairing roads, submitting water reports, maintaining the sewer system and more. Sainte-Thècle has used Mission Communications products since 2011, when it purchased a Manhole Monitor to reduce the number of sewer spills that had overflowed into nearby Lac des Chicots. The municipality was contacted by a representative of Mission Canada, who offered the monitor as a cost-effective monitoring solution for high sewer levels. Since that time, the system has been integrated into other municipal operations.
Following the Manhole Monitor, Piché placed a remote terminal unit (RTU) at the village lift station. At that time, the clean water applications were controlled by an automatic system that did not allow for adequate monitoring. When the government mandated that clean water applications closely monitor tank levels, Sainte-Thècle purchased another RTU for the clean water application to monitor the water tank level and analog thresholds.