Denver Parks outlines near-complete smart-irrigation build-out, cites water and staff savings

Denver Parks and Recreation told the City Council Parks, Arts & Culture Committee on Jan. 21 that a citywide rollout of networked irrigation controllers — known as central control or smart irrigation — is about 95% complete and is already helping the department conserve water, speed repairs and reduce reliance on vendors.

Damian Wetzel, Water Conservation Manager for Denver Parks, said the department uses more than 2,000,000,000 gallons of water a year and pays roughly $5,000,000 annually for irrigation water, making Parks Denver Water’s largest customer by volume. "Central control is what you commonly refer to as smart irrigation," Wetzel said, adding that controllers communicate over radios or cellular service and that Parks now has "over 700 individual central control units." He described the system as a tool to program by park and landscape type and to detect leaks or theft through flow and master-valve sensors.

The program’s nut is tighter, data-driven watering, officials said. The department tracks evapotranspiration (ET) and maintains…