Wednesday, OCTOBER 22, 2025 |

Photo – Stevie Osborn shows the new SCADA system – Courtesy City of Rawlins

The City of Rawlins unveiled its new computer-controlled water management system.

On Friday, October 17th, the City of Rawlins announced the replacement of the antiquated SCADA, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, system at the municipal water treatment plant.

Water Treatment Plant Operator Stevie Osborn described the SCADA system as the facility’s central control hub. Osborn said the new system allows plant workers to monitor and manage every aspect of the treatment process from a single control room.

Osborn said the previous system was installed 40 years ago and that newly trained SCADA technicians were unfamiliar with its operation, making repairs difficult. Rawlins Public Information Officer Mira Miller added that the system was so outdated, water treatment plant staff were often forced to find replacement parts through online auctions.

Water Treatment Plant Operator Osborn said the previous SCADA system operated on Windows 7, which has been obsolete for more than five years.

In addition to running modern hardware and software, Osborn said the new SCADA system will let plant crews monitor more aspects of the water supply. Osborn said the upgraded system now supports turbidity meters at the springs and wells, technology that couldn’t be integrated into the city’s old platform. These meters will help reduce flow disruptions when crews work on the water transmission lines.

Planning for the SCADA system replacement began in January, with the physical work starting in April. Public Information Officer Miller said the entire project was funded through a Wyoming Community Development Authority grant.

The majority of the SCADA replacement project was completed by mid-summer.

Once the work was done, Water Treatment Plant Operator Osborn said her team immediately began working to bring the water pretreatment plant, which draws water directly from the North Platte River to supplement the city’s other sources, back online. Osborn said the new SCADA system helped the pretreatment plant operate more efficiently than ever before.

Thanks to the increased capabilities of the new SCADA system, Osborn said she was able to operate the pretreatment plant for 68 hours without cleaning the filters, which is more than four times longer than the previous system’s 15-hour limit. Osborn said the new computer-controlled water management system will help the city address future water challenges.

Public Information Officer Mira Miller said a fully functional pretreatment plant will allow the city to move forward with other water supply projects. For instance, Miller said the new SCADA is necessary for completing repairs to the water transmission line from Sage Creek Springs.

Both Osborn and Miller said the new SCADA system is critical to ensuring Rawlins has dependable access to clean water well into the future.

The post Rawlins Computerized Water Management System Now Online first appeared on Bigfoot 99 Radio.