Over the past few years, the City of Escondido has expanded their SmartLevel™ monitoring system to 33 locations, including all of their lift stations. Data from these sensing locations has provided Escondido with early warning of potential spills dozens of times since 2006. In the four days between January 17 and January 24, 2017, the City of Escondido received 4.73 inches of rain, nearly one half of normal annual rainfall in four days. A section of steel reinforced concrete pipe spanning 173 feet collapsed sometime shortly before 1:47am on the morning of January 21st during a high flow I&I event. This collapse caused sewage water to back up to a location with a SmartLevel sensor, alerting City staff at 2:14am.

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