About Santa Margarita Water District
The Santa Margarita Water District is the second largest retail water
agency in Orange County, California. Formed in 1964 as a landowner
district by a group of ranchers who wanted to create a reliable sourceof water for their cattle, the District serves over 155,000 customers in
Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and the unincorporated areas ofCoto de Caza, Las Flores, Ladera Ranch, and Talega.
The District provides its customers with safe, affordable, and reliable
water and wastewater services that maximize human, environmental,
and financial resources to help guide South Orange County’s watersupply needs into the next century. To perform these services,
the District carefully monitors and diligently maintains more than
1,200 miles of water and sewer lines across its 62,000 acre service
area to ensure that customers receive the water they need.

CompanySanta Margarita Water District

Conserving and Protecting a Limited Water Supply
Panduit helps the Santa Margarita Water District improve network
reliability while achieving rapid deployment and high availability

Country
California, USAIndustry

Business Challenges

Water/Waste Water

Business Challenges
Deliver a reliable, highly available, secure
network infrastructure to improve theDistrict’s data communication capability
while accommodating increased industry
demands and reducing operational costs.

Panduit Solution
Integrated Network Zone System to support
the demands of real-time control and datacollection and help ensure the industrial
networks and control systems operate ata sufficient performance margin within thespecified environmental conditions.

Business Benefits
A secure Integrated Network Zone Systemthat enables network communications
between the control room and manufacturing
floor, providing high availability, scalability, andreduced deployment time by up to 75%.

The Santa Margarita Water District’s Chiquita Water Reclamation Plant (CWRP) operates
around the clock seven days a week and processes six million gallons daily. As partof the District, the CWRP is a tertiary system that provides the surrounding communities
with recycled water for irrigation and landscaping.
When the antiquated control and communication system at the remote CWRP began
experiencing poor and delayed transmission, impacting communications, the District
decided it was time to improve its network communications system by replacing RFcommunications with a fiber optic network and Wi-Fi coverage.
The CWRP had approximately ten Allen-Bradley® PLCs that controlled the entire
process in the treatment plant. Initially, the PLCs were connected with radio links to acentral control room. However, the radio links lacked longevity and added latency onscreen updates, which limited reporting intervals.
It was also imperative for the District to retrieve real-time data, increase productivity,
and allow safe, remote access for IT and SCADA staff to managed switches for network
drops to control panels and field mounted devices.
Finally, the upgrade needed to be completed within a firm timeframe that would provide
a seamless flow of services to customers as the improvements were being implemented.
According to Brian Harrison, SCADA Project Manager, “We needed a structured
approach that would improve network communications while increasing operational
efficiency and reducing installation time and lifecycle costs.”

Strategic Objectives
Upgrading the existing network infrastructure would keep the District at the forefrontof technological advancements and provide it with the ability to maintain a competitive
advantage in the waste water conservation industry. The upgrade would also provide
quality service to its customers by increasing network uptime and availability.

“We needed a structured approach thatwould improve network communications
while increasing operational efficiency
and reducing installation time andlifecycle costs.”
Brian Harrison,SCADA Project Manager

In addition, the secure, sustainable, and future-ready network would enhance thecompany’s ability to promote efficient use of water resources and conservation toachieve cost savings.
Along with physical security being a significant factor for this upgrade, the Districtneeded a long-term, cost-effective solution that would require little maintenanceor replacements.

Panduit Solution
To accommodate its requirements, the District designed the fiber optic network to help utilize the existing duct banks throughout theplant and transfer the PLCs to a very secure, high speed network. While researching terminating fiber at various locations, the District
decided to also deploy the Panduit Integrated Network Zone System. Along with the Panduit solution, selected partners for this project
were Rockwell Automation and Alpha Omega for the fiber installation portion of the project.
According to Harrison, “The zone architecture approach provides a solution that is robust and easy to deploy and troubleshoot for all
areas of the facility while providing access to the network for both operations and IT.”The Panduit Integrated Network Zone System with the Allen-Bradley® Stratix Industrial Ethernet Switch enables network communications
between the control room and manufacturing floor of the District’s industrial facility. This capability allows for more efficient and future
ready communications, as users migrate proprietary manufacturing floor networks to a single network technology using the EtherNet/IP
open protocol to achieve IT and automation best practices. Integrating with the Allen-Bradley® Stratix Switch enables the District toachieve rapid deployment and offers management and diagnostics from within IT and controls environments, and optimizes
network traffic.
The versatile zone enclosures were placed at eight selected locations throughout the plant. The final termination is within zone
enclosures distributed throughout each floor of the building, allowing cables to be managed and patched in a single enclosure. It also
helps reduce the number of home runs throughout the plant and abandoned cable in plenum spaces, allowing the plant to run moreefficiently and safely.
The Integrated Network Zone System includes copper uplinks with redundant power supplies and pre-installed AB battery-based
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). The Panduit UPS uses ultracapacitor technology, which allows the District to maintain operational
efficiency more effectively through improved device management, employing a smaller width that saves valuable space and allows better
integration and zone monitoring. The UPS solution works in conjunction with the Integrated Network Zone System to lower the risk of
downtime associated with power interruptions to keep the plant’s critical equipment operating at full capacity.

To round out the system, the District deployed the following Panduit technologies:• Opticom® Rack Mount Fiber Trays and Fiber Adapter Patch Panels to provide a flexible and modular system for managing fiber		 termination, connections, and patching for all applications• PatchLink™ Horizontal Cable Managers to provide neat and efficient management of patch cables and flexible fingers to organize		 the patch cords, simplifying moves, adds, and changes• Opticom® OM3 Multimode Duplex Fiber Patch Cords to connect the ETAPs by running from the fiber output of one ETAP to the		 fiber input of another ETAP• LC Opticom® Angled Fiber Adapter Panels (FAPs) and adapters to conserve enclosure space
The Panduit Network Identification Solution ensures that the District can quickly and accurately identify system components
and connections.
The Panduit network security lock-in/block-out devices are deployed on connection points to block unauthorized access to the existing
network infrastructure and help ensure the safety and security of the District’s network infrastructure.

Business Benefits
The deployed solution allows District personnel to quickly report issues, which increases reliability and productivity, and optimizes
available resources. Refresh rates were also improved, from five minutes on a report by exception basis to real-time data transfer, whichmeans there is now reliable remote access and personnel no longer has to perform message handling to tag data points and PLCs.
Providing Ethernet to all locations was important for the District to experience high speed network communications, increasing productivity
while improving performance for IT and PLC networks.
The CWRP was part of a larger project to upgrade SCADA systems, therefore the District was very pleased when Panduit delivered thisportion of the project within a three month timeframe, allowing almost immediate deployment, well ahead of the one year estimation.
The implementation of the Integrated Network Zone System allowed the District to achieve:
Speed of Deployment• Delivers up to 75% reduction in deployment time compared to systems that are not pre-engineered, validated and tested• Provides single part number ordering to a full solution for zone architecture deployment in an industrial environment• Enables scalability on a global basis for greater agility and faster time to production
Mitigated Risk of Downtime• Allows rapid expansion of switch and ports as the network grows• Provides consistent high network performance with active equipment delivered within an optimized physical layerReliability• Localizes network traffic to improve resiliency• Significantly reduces costs and complications associated with integrating the manufacturing floor and enterprise networks“The project was a tremendous time savings and allowed the District to continue its business operations seamlessly. We have peace ofmind knowing that we now have rapid and consistent transmission of data from our corporate network to the equipment on the factory
floor, and the necessary environmental protection,” said Harrison. “Everything works and the solution is very turnkey – that’s how easy it
was. Working with Panduit was money well-spent.”

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