City of Bakersfield, California

The leaders of Bakersfield, California have made historic strides in managing water. A decade of drought and a dwindling water table led the city’s Parks Division to begin upgrading its electromechanical controllers to a Rain Bird MAXICOM Central Control system. Shortly thereafter, Bakersfield received state and national accolades for preeminent accomplishments in water conservation.

Drought Threatens Water Supply

During the late 1980s, so little precipitation fell in California that most cities faced drought conditions. Bakersfield, located in the state’s semiarid Central Valley, was no exception. The city’s steady population growth was putting demands on the ever-dwindling water table. The water level in some wells had dropped as much as 60 feet and nearby Kern River flowed at less than 50 percent capacity. Yet city leaders were determined not to raise water rates. The need for lean management was becoming paramount.

For Bakersfield’s Parks Division, responsible for irrigating the city’s parks and street landscapes, the drought years forced a hard look at operations. “Not only were we concerned with the potential need to ration water, but we needed ways to reduce our operating budget,” said Mike Doyle, one of the Parks Division’s supervisors and water managers.

Doyle and fellow supervisor Terri McCormick implemented a plan to manually program electromechanical controllers used throughout the city to fit changing weather. However, it took one full-time staff person just to accomplish this, and there was no way to match irrigation application rates with soil infiltration rates to prevent runoff. The Parks Division began researching solutions.

The chance to try MAXICOM arrived in 1990 when Castle and Cook, a large developer with offices in Bakersfield, proposed a master planned residential subdivision for the south end of the city. The development includes a country club, 18-hole golf course, four neighborhood parks, schools and major landscaping on the medians and streets. The Planning Department approved the development and the Parks Division agreed to maintain its parks and street landscaping, which at complete build-out will amount to 6.5 acres.

Seizing the opportunity, now-retired park supervisor Frank Fabbri collaborated with the developer to plan an irrigation system that would include a MAXICOM Central Control system with a Rain Bird weather station. To plan the system, Castle and Cook turned to irrigation consultant Frank Simon, president of Landscape Irrigation Consulting (LIC) in Dana Point, Calif., and the engineering firm Martin-McIntosh, located in Bakersfield. “Our role was to design the communication links between the computer and the site including the Cluster Control Units (CCUs), satellites, master valves and flow sensors,” said Gregg Polubinsky, a landscape architect with Martin-McIntosh.

MAXICOM Packs in High Performance

Kern Turf Supply, Inc., an authorized Rain Bird Distributor located in Bakersfield, was readily available to help the Parks Division’s field supervisor, Neil Tierney, get the MAXICOM system up and running. It wasn’t long before the division reaped the rewards of a centralized control system that adjusts irrigation demands automatically and provides immediate monitoring and recording of water use. “The beauty of the system is that water requirements are determined by ET rates,” said Doyle. “The weather station sends information to the computer, such as wind velocity, temperature, humidity and sunlight, and MAXICOM adjusts the amount of applied water automatically.”

Furthering high performance, MAXICOM packs in features like Cycle & Soak™, Flo-Manager™ and Flo-Watch™. With Cycle & Soak, the system minimizes runoff because it matches the application rate with the infiltration rate of the soil. “A 20-minute watering cycle can be broken up into four, five-minute cycles that will help prevent runoff. Cycle & Soak will pause, allowing the water to percolate into the soil for a preset amount of time before starting the next cycle,” said Doyle.

MAXICOM’s Flo-Manager helped Doyle and McCormick with another problem. Because Bakersfield’s ET rate peaks at 85 inches during the summer, the Parks Division faced the difficult task of applying enough water within an allotted time. With the outdated electromechanical controllers, the parks division could only water stations in sequence and couldn’t operate more than one valve per controller at a time. Flo-Manager shortens the irrigation window and saves time. Now, multiple stations can operate at once. “Flo-Manager will seek out and operate those valves that will maximize the flow capability but won’t exceed a predetermined flow cap,” said Doyle.

Working hand in hand with Flo-Manager is Flo-Watch, a feature that detects excessive flows due to line breaks, thereby preventing wasted water. “We can program a flow rate cap into the computer for each satellite,” said Doyle. If Flo-Watch detects a break in the lateral line, it will immediately tell the field satellite to advance to the next station. If Flo-Watch detects a main line break, it will tell a master valve to shut down that satellite.

City Recognized for Water Conservation

To measure the outcome of all this technology, the Parks Division began a water-use study in parts of the residential development. The study compared systems controlled by MAXICOM with systems in similar sized areas controlled by electromechanical controllers. Over a one-year period, the study showed water savings amounting to more than 10 million gallons.

The Parks Division plans to incorporate MAXICOM into existing and new developments as funds allow. One such new development is a 27-acre recreation area along Kern River. The potential water savings for this new development is projected at more than 3 million gallons per year. MAXICOM also helps to save electricity and money by turning lights on and off at a Bakersfield park.

Although Bakersfield’s water table is still below normal, city leaders say conservation is rewarding. In 1995, the Parks Division received statewide recognition from the California Water Awareness Campaign for the best water conservation program for landscaping. That same year, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, considered the world’s preeminent water management agency, honored the city with a conservation award in the “Promising Products” category for using MAXICOM.