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Water Infrastructure
By modernizing the city’s water, stormwater, and wastewater infrastructure, the Milpitas Smart City Infrastructure Program will improve efficiency and reduce water usage throughout the city. At the same time, the program will improve water quality, accelerate resolution of system leaks, and provide city residents with information to better manage water usage in their homes and businesses.
Water Improvement Measures
This part of the program will replace old water meters at residential, industrial, and commercial buildings throughout Milpitas with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) devices (also known as “smart meters”). It will install touchless, efficient plumbing fixtures in public buildings. It will also implement a highly automated supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system for citywide water, wastewater, and stormwater management.
Together, these improvements will offer:
Prompt detection and reporting of leaks, minimizing potential property damage and expensive bills for customers.
Increased speed and accuracy of water bills, giving water customers more information about usage patterns.
Reduced water waste throughout the city.
Optimal water quality through precise, automated treatment of the water supply.
Improved staff productivity via automated infrastructure monitoring and remote meter reading.
Financial Impact
This portion of the program will leverage grants from regional water agencies to reduce the up-front costs of the upgrades. These incentives, combined with reductions in water use and water loss throughout city facilities, will more than offset expenditures. In fact, the water infrastructure improvements are expected to result in more than $14 million in net cost savings for the city over the lifetime of the program.
What Can Residents Do?
Milpitas residents will soon be able to view their near real-time water usage and set alerts for unusually high usage (identifying possible leaks) through an online portal. There are many ways in which residents can take further action to Make Water Conservation a Milpitas Way of Life.
These include:
- Reducing outdoor water use by adjusting irrigation schedules and opting for drought-tolerant landscaping
- Promptly identifying and repairing leaks
- Taking shorter showers
- Running dishwashers only when full
