Longmont, Colorado has been considered one of the best places to live in the United States, and its increase in population has forced the city to keep pace. In the city’s most recent wastewater treatment master plan, the City’s Public Works & Natural Resources Department took the initiatives necessary to determine capacity requirements for its local wastewater treatment plant to figure out future build-out. These requirements were ultimately deemed an overestimation and were replaced with a flow monitoring program capable of determining actual flow rates.
Longmont’s wastewater collection system has over 300 miles of sanitary sewer lines, and its treatment plant is capable of handling 17 million gallons per day (MGD). Currently the average daily flow is 8.5 MGD, with plans in store to boost that number up to 21 MGD.
Open channel flow meters for portable flow monitoring applications were what Longmont was previously using before switching over to Hach’s Sigma Model 950 Flow Meters, largely due to the screen and keypad accessibility. The city owns nine of these flow meters that connect to its SCADA system, collecting data in sewer lines ranging between 27” to 42”. These meters are installed in March and then removed between October and November. Using Hach’s Insight software, data is collected on a bi-monthly basis and compared with that of the SCADA system.
Back in 2005, Longmont was in need of a portable flow meter that could be moved from site-to-site to assist personnel in their Inflow & Infiltration (I&I) monitoring locations. Additionally, there was a monitoring location within the collection system that was causing measuring difficulties with submerged sensors due to sediment build-up in the 27″ line. These problems were solved using Hach’s Marsh-McBirney Flo-Dar Flow Meter, which uses a non-contact radar velocity/area sensor.
The Avanti Company, provides Flow Meters and Metering Systems including water meters and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) to maximize and better utilize the data coming into your Utility. Call 1-800-284-5231 for additional information on water and wastewater system products like Hach or visit our website at www.avanticompany.com to learn more about the services we provide including on-site flow meter testing, sewer flow monitoring, and metering system support.