In 1989, Deane Johnson moved to Chico, California, his new neighbor was President of the local water Co. The water company, Butte Creek Estates Service Corporation (BCESC) has been in existence since the early 1960's.
Deane has served as a board member, secretary and board president.
Deane has agreed to relate his experience as a water company board member for this newsletter report.
Q. Deane, what was your experience before leading the BCESC board?
A. In the 70's I was elected to the Board of the Willowside Mutual Water System in Santa Rosa, CA. I served two three year terms and was President for three years, mainly because no one else would volunteer which hasn't changed a bit for most water boards in the years since. It was a different world, the board's job was to keep reserve funds and hold annual meetings. The local Health Department checked the quality of our water once a year for free and we had few problems. We didn't use chlorine and only had problems with our pumps from time to time. We ran no other water quality tests.
Q. What is your background with BCESC?
A. The water Company where we live is called BCESC which has been in existence since the 1960's. It was first organized as a Water Company, and then many years ago converted to a Share Holder non-profit Corporation with each home owner having one share of stock and one vote. My neighbor asked me to serve on the Board in about 1991 which I agreed to do ending up as secretary. Within 6 months I was elected President of the board. I have served on the Board since, except for one year and I am now Secretary again.
Q. How was BCESC doing when you came on the board?
A. I found BCESC had one well and was under a Government edict to get another well because the fire flows were too low among other reasons. A second well was brought on line in late 1992. In this time frame we heard that the laws were changing and another neighbor, who was the Board as VP, helped me download the new regulations from the web. We were shocked to find that no Coliform bacteria positives would henceforth be allowed as in the past. We promptly failed the Coliform bacteria test and had to shock chlorination our wells twice, along with door to door notices of "Don't Drink The Water." We put chlorination devices on the system and began the daily testing procedure using all members of the board for this onerous duty. During this time I tried to put a modem on our old well and set up a way to monitor our system. It worked but you can imagine the problems with only phone lines and limited computer knowledge. The chlorine testing went on and on and on and the health department wanted to see our reports as well as more water tests, and on and on.
Q. What was your introduction to the Watchman System?
A. Several years ago we were asked if our new well site could be used for an experiment to do the same thing I was doing with my modem system. A group, that would eventually become Iris, put together a better system but with the same telephone limitations. They finally gave up and I thought that was the end of the attempt. During this time BCESC had contracted with Mike Buchanan as the system operator to help us manage the system. I trained him and he got his D license and kept all the records that were now being required. About 4 years ago Iris contacted BCESC and asked us what we would want in a "beta" system" to really control our system. Mike and I came up with a "pie in the sky" list which we knew nobody could ever give us based on past experience. After awhile these guys at Iris came back with a price and a list that fulfilled every one of our desires and then some. Impossible, the only problem was the cost.
Q. What kinds of things influenced the board to move forward with the Watchman System?
A. It is difficult to codify that specifically, but we began thinking of the increasing labor costs, fuel costs, solving problems and trying to put a specific dollar amount on them, you get my point. How much more? We were paying fairly large sums in addition to our operator for the pump company to come out and switch our pumps on and off-cycling them to keep them from filling with bacteria and rusting. One Board member heard of similar operations at Chico State University. I worked hard at coming up with figures that showed annual ongoing costs would soon pay for Watchman if it worked?
Q. Can you give some specific examples of how Watchman has demonstrated its value to your board and the water company?
A. Mainly after we got it installed the thing worked. Several members of our Board had been involved in the required daily chlorine testing and some had read the new rules that were in effect. We were paying our operator anywhere from $100 to $500 extra when he had to rush to the site because of a problem. We did have a rudimentary alarm system installed. Another one that comes to mind is over a battery charger on our diesel generator at well #3. We kept burning up batteries as a result of overcharging when we did not have Watchman. After we installed Watchman we quickly determined the problem and corrected it.
Q. Can you name specific incidents that the Watchman System has helped you prevent serious system outages or as in the past helped eliminate the "Don't Drink the Water" notifications?
A. Certainly many examples. Back in May, our operator received a Watchman alarm that the chlorine was totally out of control at site 2. The long and the short of it is that it was dangerously high. We corrected the problem before it infiltrated the whole system which would have happened without those warnings because the alarm was at about 7 PM. Since the reading was about 7.0 parts per million and headed upward can you imagine the position the Board would have been in? Thank goodness for the Watchman and Liability insurance. The same thing happened again last month and because of Watchman's archived records we believe we have found the problem.
Q. So having access to all of your systems data archived has proved valuable to you and the water company?
A. Absolutely, we haven't made a Chlorine report or kept a log in three years. The logs for the years prior to that take up a whole drawer in a file cabinet and the Health Department wouldn't let us throw any of those paper files away even though no one ever looks at them. Also, we are currently in need of water pressures and flows throughout the system so our Engineer can determine changes that we need to make to our well #1. This would take a lot of manual labor to obtain without Watchman. There are many others.
Q. Have you and your board found the Watchman System to be what you were hoping for?
A. We are able to manage the system almost magically. I was in Hawaii with a laptop and a telephone connection. I saw the chlorine was out of line at one site and guessed that it was that way because it needed to be calibrated. With Watchman that is all duck soup, solved from a remote location and I now get to stay in bed and our operator makes the switches from home.
In summary Watchman is an all encompassing answer to the future problems of water systems! The Health Dept now practically ignores BCESC because we are on top of almost every problem. And isn't that a great goal?