How a Top California Public Utility Broke the Bottlenecks of Traditional Sewer Assessment

About Sonoma County Water

Sonoma County Water is one of California's leading public utilities, responsible for providing water supply and wastewater management services across Sonoma County and the surrounding region. As a public agency serving a large and geographically diverse service area, Sonoma County Water operates under the dual mandate of delivering reliable, cost-effective infrastructure services while meeting the stringent environmental and regulatory standards that govern California's water and wastewater systems.

Like all large public utilities, Sonoma County Water faces the ongoing challenge of assessing and maintaining an extensive sewer infrastructure network — work that must be done continuously, accurately, and within the constraints of a public agency budget.

The Challenge

Sonoma County Water's sewer assessment program relied on traditional manual inspection workflows — the industry standard approach, but one with well-documented limitations. Manual NASSCO PACP condition coding is time-intensive, subject to variability between individual technicians, and difficult to scale without proportional increases in labor cost and review time.

For a public utility managing a large infrastructure network with finite resources, these constraints had real consequences. Assessment programs took longer than they needed to. Review bottlenecks slowed the delivery of actionable data. And the variability inherent in manual coding introduced uncertainty into the condition assessment data that capital planning decisions depended on.

Sonoma County Water needed a solution that could break these bottlenecks — delivering faster, more accurate, and more consistent assessment results without requiring a proportional increase in staff or budget.

The Solution

Sonoma County Water adopted SewerAI's AutoCode platform to modernize its sewer inspection and condition assessment workflow. AutoCode's AI computer vision technology automates the identification and classification of sewer defects from CCTV inspection footage, generating NASSCO PACP-compliant deliverables at a fraction of the time required by manual review.

The platform's one-hour onboarding process meant that Sonoma County Water's team was operational quickly, with minimal disruption to existing workflows. And because AutoCode integrates seamlessly with standard inspection processes, the transition from manual to AI-assisted assessment was straightforward — delivering immediate results from the first projects processed through the platform.

Results

6x Faster In-Office Assessment

The most immediate impact of AutoCode was a dramatic reduction in the time required for in-office sewer assessment and annotation. Sonoma County Water achieved a 6x improvement in assessment speed — work that previously consumed significant staff hours could now be completed in a fraction of the time. For a public agency managing assessment programs across a large service area, that efficiency gain translates directly into cost savings and faster delivery of infrastructure data.

2x Daily Field Production

The efficiency gains extended into the field as well. By removing the coding and review bottleneck from the inspection workflow, AutoCode enabled Sonoma County Water's field crews to double their daily production — inspecting twice as much pipe per day without additional equipment or personnel. For a utility with an extensive network to assess and a finite inspection season, doubling field productivity is a transformative outcome.

97% Average Coding Accuracy

Speed without accuracy is not a solution — it is a different kind of problem. SewerAI's AutoCode delivers both. With 97% average coding accuracy, less than 10% margin of error, and 32.99% more conditions identified compared to manual assessment, the platform produces a higher-quality data product than the manual workflow it replaces. For Sonoma County Water, that accuracy means capital planning decisions are based on a more complete and reliable picture of infrastructure condition — reducing the risk of both over- and under-estimating the severity of defects.

Meeting California's Regulatory Standards

For a California public utility operating under the state's stringent wastewater discharge requirements and Sewer System Management Plan obligations, compliance is non-negotiable. SewerAI's AutoCode meets NASSCO, PACP, and other industry standards — ensuring that the condition assessment data it produces satisfies the regulatory requirements that govern Sonoma County Water's inspection program. AI-assisted assessment does not mean cutting corners on compliance. It means meeting the same standards, faster and more consistently.

The Bigger Picture

Sonoma County Water's experience is not an outlier. It is representative of what SewerAI delivers for public utilities across the country — a platform that breaks the bottlenecks of traditional sewer management workflows, reporting on tens of thousands of linear feet per hour while maintaining the accuracy and compliance standards that utilities depend on.

SewerAI is already used across the country to serve more than 130 million people, with more than 400,000 surveys completed and 22,000 miles of pipe under management. For Sonoma County Water, joining that network means access to a platform that is continuously improving — and a partner that is invested in helping public utilities do more with the resources they have.

In Their Own Words

“We were 10 times more productive and able to inspect the entire system — 3,500 manholes — in a matter of months.”

— Danny Colvin, Maintenance Coordinator, Sonoma County Water

“Previously we were really just taking our scores and our mandate was “hey, fix any grade 4 or 5 defect” — we really weren’t taking into consideration the consequence of failure, and that just wasn’t efficient. This tool here has really helped us put some reasoning behind the priorities we are going to choose to make the repair. Beforehand it was really just what we felt were the worst ones, and going out to fix those.”

— Danny Colvin, Maintenance Coordinator, Sonoma County Water

“One of the things that we’d been missing was taking our PACP data and getting that into our capital improvement projects. Typically, those projects have been capacity driven. Now, we’re able to overlay our capacity repairs with our higher risk maintenance and structural issues. You guys have been improving this almost daily — it continues to evolve and the improvements have been great.”

— Danny Colvin, Maintenance Coordinator, Sonoma County Water