Case Study: Cobb Area Water District achieves remote monitoring and cuts labor & maintenance costs with Samsara

Cobb Area Water District - Customer Case Study

Cobb Area Water District, a small utility in Lake County, CA, doubled its customer base and geographic footprint after a 2015 wildfire forced nine neighboring districts to merge into Cobb. The consolidation grew their monitored sites from five to 18—some over 10 miles apart—and made daily truck rolls to check tank levels and pumps unsustainable due to rising labor, overtime, and pump replacement costs, while traditional SCADA options were prohibitively expensive.

Cobb deployed Samsara’s cloud-based software and Industrial Controllers for remote monitoring and control, giving operators mobile dashboards, real-time tank-level alerts, and historical voltage/amperage data to spot pump problems early. The system reduced site visits and emergency maintenance, cut pump replacements and overtime, enabled supervisory control of pumps and VFDs, and—per GM Ben Murphy—will pay for itself in under three years while providing expanding capabilities at far lower cost than their previous SCADA solution.

Cobb Area Water District

Ben Murphy

General Manager