Advanced Operations and Controls

About the Program

Category: County Resiliency (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

Improper monitoring of control systems at water production and wastewater treatment plants could potentially cause catastrophic issues, such as unsafe drinking water or releases of untreated sewage. Gwinnett’s Water Resources department decided that using multiple system platforms with different hardware, software, interfaces, equipment, and communication methods was inefficient. In 2015, we began a multi-year project to convert all Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems then in use to a single standard system. Gwinnett County currently operates two drinking water production facilities and 4,000 miles of water distribution pipes to provide safe, reliable drinking water to nearly a million residents, plus more than 3,000 miles of sewer pipelines that deliver wastewater to three wastewater treatment facilities that use some of the most technologically advanced treatment processes in the country. Water Resources also manages more than 1,400 miles of stormwater drainage pipes across the county.