CWA approves fiber optic cable monitoring contract

Joe Naiman

Village News Correspondent

The San Diego County Water Authority (CWA) approved a contract with Pure Technologies U.S., Inc., to monitor acoustic fiber optic cable in four CWA pipelines.

The CWA board vote April 27 approved a contract for up to $2,319,814 over five years to monitor the fiber optic cable in Pipeline 3, Pipeline 4, Pipeline 5, and the crossover pipeline. The monitoring will cover 10.6 miles of Pipeline 4 between Fallbrook and Vista, 10.5 miles of Pipeline 5 between Fallbrook and Vista, 7.6 miles of the crossover pipeline between Vista and Escondido, 7.6 miles of Pipeline 3 between Lake Murray on the San Diego-La Mesa border and the Sweetwater Reservoir, and 0.4 miles of Pipeline 3 in the Clairemont Mesa area of San Diego.

"We can save money by not doing rehabilitation on pipes that are not needing it at this time," said CWA operations and maintenance manager Nathan Faber. "We can also respond to a decaying incident proactively."

The CWA has an asset management program which protects the reliability of CWA facilities. Inspection technologies reduce the risk of pipeline failures and are also used to plan pipeline rehabilitation schedules.

"We are monitoring almost everything that hasn't been rehabilitated or is not in service," Faber said.

The CWA has been using acoustic fiber optic monitoring since 2006.

"It's really been a remarkable program that has saved us a tremendous amount of money in the long run by knowing where our problem pipes are," said CWA general manager Maureen Stapleton.

The fiber optic cable is inside the concrete pipe as are wires which are wrapped to give the pipe its strength. "The coating can crack and expose these wires to the elements," Faber said.

The acoustic cables allow sound signals to be sent when wires break. "It can hear these noises and let us know where the decay is occurring," Faber said.

A system of acoustic and analog filters determines the extent of an event, and proprietary software determines whether further analysis is needed. If analysis is required, Pure Technologies staff members analyze the activity to confirm that the event is a wire break while determining the location.

The results will be provided to the CWA within one business day. CWA operations staff also performs a basic review to determine if immediate analysis and action is required.

The contract from July 1, 2017 to July 1, 2019 is for $951,465, and the CWA has an option to add three years to the contract at a cost of $1,368,349.