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SCADA Adapts to Irrigation and Canal System Needs Stephen W. Smith, Aqua Engineering, Inc. and Donald O. Magnuson, New Cache La Poudre Irrigating Co. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) has been with us a long time but most- ly with industrial process control and monitoring circumstances that could afford the technology. Irrigation, for many years, was not an industry that warranted the steep hardware cost until some irrigation manufacturers began to develop a specialized type of SCADA from their own propri- etary hardware and software. In the mid -1980s we began to see adapted SCADA systems that were specifically intended for ir- rigation projects that could afford it -- golf irrigation, in particular. In landscape irrigation, we referred to these systems as "centralized ir- rigation control." These early con- trol systems were further adapted to accommodate distributed sites such as school districts or mu- nicipal park departments. In 1986, the City of Pueblo became the first city in the country to imple- ment centralized irrigation control for distributed park sites. During this period, specialized SCADA systems found a niche in irrigation and those systems, by a myriad of different proprietary names, have been with us for almost 25 years. Chuck Lurvey sits in front of the SCADA central computer for the Dolores Project. Radial gate icons on the HMI screen indicate the water surface level in the canal and the gate positions of the radial gates at checks along the canal. Where was agricultural irrigation to be found in this picture? There were a few irrigation central control systems to be found in agricul- ture, but comparatively few. Agriculture could generally not afford the rather steep cost of the SCADA systems of the past. During the early 1990's, the cost of implementing SCADA on a per site basis was in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 per site without gate actuation hardware. This cost was quite high in comparison to the cost of a classic chart recorder installation on a weir or flume, or for that mat- ter, the cost of manual actuation of valves, headgates, and checks by the canal company's ditch rider. The current cost of SCADA implementation has decreased in recent years to a price point where SCADA is affordable to mutual irrigation companies. Often smaller mutual irrigation companies do not have an office or a staff per se, but a SCADA central system can be located anywhere that is practical. SCADA can provide smaller companies many cost effective features which result in significantly improved canal operations, improved deliveries to shareholders, and reduced liabilities.