Data Collection: Water Monitoring in the Salinas Valley
Monterey County, Calif. is combining GPS, GIS and digital data collection efforts to effectively manage its water supply.
By Sally Smith

The Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA) is tasked with management and conservation of water for the lush Salinas Valley and all of Monterey County, Calif. Simply put, the agency is responsible for the provision of a sufficient quantity of quality water for the county's residents.
      "Over 50 years of cumulative overdrafting from the ground water supplies has caused sea water intrusion from Monterey Bay," said Darryl Tyler, hydrology GIS technician for the agency. "Currently the overdrafting is greater than 50,000 acre-feet per year. This endangers 16,000 acres of top value crop land. We have a $2.2 billion agricultural industry throughout the valley which must be protected."
      These factors add up to significant challenges for the agency's 53 employees.
      One agency member in particular has been thinking overtime on how to monitor and manage the increasing water demands. Matt Zidar, Monterey County Water Resources Agency principal hydrologist, has been gradually increasing the technological capabilities of the agency during his past eight years in county service to meet the needs of the agency.
      There have been two applications developed specifically for the county's needs through the efforts of Diba Consulting Software Engineers from Irvine, Calif. Through customizing a commercial database software program from Oracle and a popular geographic information system application, Arc/Info GIS, the agency now boasts two client/server applications which make use of data collected from the field.
      The workhorse application is appropriately, WRAGIS (Water Resource Agency Geographic Information System). It uses volumes of time-series water quality and water level data for analysis from the data collection platforms throughout the county. Data relating to ground water, water qualities, geology, and well completion records such as depth, casing materials, and perforation intervals, are all part of the immense amount of information collected and managed.
      "This system involves a lot of related data - we take the latitude, longitude, elevation, and add the fourth dimension, time," explains Zidar.
      "A huge data stream from our data collectors goes through analysis to interpret the information that supports decision making related to county's water needs," said Zidar.
      The second system developed for the agency is GEMS (Groundwater Extraction Management System), which is a true client/server application using Arc/View as a client, with a "graphically rich, user-friendly front end." The GEMS application is used for well registration, permitting, and tracking ground water extraction from individual wells serving agricultural and municipal users.
      Part of GEMS well registration process includes a GPS survey of each well's location. To accomplish this, the agency uses its Pathfinder Professional Series receivers from Trimble Navigation Ltd. These receivers are capable of accuracies in the sub-meter range (using differential correction) and can store user-defined attributes. The agency's field personnel are currently collecting over 50 items of information from each well site. After returning from the field, the data from these surveys are migrated into both the GEMS database and Arc/Info. This has become a turnkey system. The total time required to take data from the field, process it, and have it available for either analysis or cartology is approximately 30 minutes.
      To gather the information needed for this decision making, the agency must monitor wells around the county. Statistics are collected from over 600 wells around the 300,000 acre area to solve the puzzle of protecting the water quality and managing the ground water supplies.
      Twenty-five wells throughout the valley are specially instrumented with pressure transducers and continuous data recorders, which use variations in pressure to determine water of the valley's aquifers. Ranging in depth from 30 feet to 200 feet, many of the wells monitored have been dug specifically for the project, although some monitoring is done to wells established prior to project implementation.
      Hydrology GIS technician, Darryl Tyler, has been deeply involved with all aspects of the agency's GPS, GIS, and digital data collection efforts.
      "We gather statistics from the pressure transducers, which have their own memory storage," explained Tyler. "The data is collected at four-hour intervals, and we download one month's data at a time. We originally collected data at much shorter intervals, but we found that we weren't gaining sufficient modeling definition to warrant the cost. That was a huge amount of data. Still, thousands of records are collected two times a week over a 900 square mile area, so a computer is required to collect the data.
      Last year at a GIS/GPS conference sponsored by Arc/Info at the Berkeley Yacht Club, Tyler talked to Barry Hillman, president of Condor Earth Technologies.
      As a developer of pen-based GIS (geographic information systems) mapping applications, Hillman understood the agency's requirements. Condor's software, PenMap, is a comprehensive real-time field data collection software which is integrated with both leading GIS softwares Arc/Info and ArcView. User-defined data entry forms and menu buttons are offered, and all data can be entered with the pen through automatic pop-up key pads, pick lists and sketch pads.
      Condor teams with business partner, Kalidor, to provide a rugged pen computing system for mobile applications such as the one needed by the Monterey County Water Resource Agency.
      The Kalidor computer is a 486 pen computer with rugged capabilities. California-based Kalidor is a division of ALPs Electronics, and offers its pen hardware for a variety of vertical industries where mobile workers are required, such as the utilities industry. Kalidor pen computer's components are specifically designed to withstand dust, heat and moisture, as well as to resist falls, and its touch screen can be activated by any pen.
      "We met with Barry Hillman from Condor and explained our needs," said Tyler. "Our application would be easily converted to the pen system using Condor's PenMap software. We made the decision to go with the pen computing application in May and were using the system by September."
      "I saw some tremendous advantages to this system," said Tyler. "It's GPS capabilities are compatible with our Trimble Pathfinder Base Station for differential correction. It links directly with the Total Station used by the agency's surveyor. That's a big plus. And by providing common ground, our surveyor and our GIS people have been able to support each others' goals much better. In human terms, that made life in the office better also."
      Zidar is pleased with the ruggged pen solution as well. "Kalidor provided the key piece to the system," said Zidar. "The rugged pen system is the key component to field data capture. It can withstand the bumpy farm roads, the dusty environment and the rigors of the field." "The unit also has GIS/GPS capabilities, which we plan on using with a surveyor's Total Station in the system in the near future." Zidar admits that he has been dreaming of a system like this since his college days when he was "first introduced to remote sensing."
      "Since I first realized what could be done, I've never quit thinking about it," he said.
      From a return on investment standpoint, Zidar strongly praises the system they've implemented.
      "In the old days, a crew of two would survey two wells a day," he said. "Now one person can take information from 20 wells every day in a format which is instantly ready for use in the GIS, not only increasing the efficiency of the process, but increasing the utility of the collected data as well."
      The Monterey County Water Resources Agency is not finished yet with its technological innovations. It currently has a $78 million dollar capital facilities project under construction. In cooperation with the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency, the MCWRA is building a wastewater treatment plant to reclaim water for distribution to farm land through miles of pipeline. This water will be made available to farms in the area which have been impacted by seawater intrusion. In addition, the MCWRA is developing a Salinas River Basin Management Plan which is expected to result in construction of additional capital facilities to resolve basin water problems.
      The Kalidor computer, the GIS/GPS technology and other technological solutions will be applied when moving the staff efforts from planning and design functions to the automated mapping and facilities management needs once all construction has been completed.
      "The GIS/GPS and other technical systems need to be part of the planning, engineering and operations efforts of a twenty-first century water agency or utility," said Zidar. "Anyone who isn't prepared to re-engineer their process and think 'out-of-the-box' in order to take advanatge of these capabililities isn't really thinking of how to best serve the customers and rate payers."

About the Author:
Sally S. Smith is president of SSSmith and Associates, a Cincinnati-based public relations firm specializing in high tech PR. She may be reached at 513-897-0654 (phone), 513-897-0655 (fax), or e-mail: [email protected]

Back