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EXETER, CA - Technological advancements are coming down the pike for suppliers as Exeter Engineering has installed an upgraded version of its proprietary ID Technology system, optimizing artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically grade and sort bell peppers.

“By upgrading to an AI-powered system, packing houses can save both time and money,” said Boomer Batchman, President. “For quality produce, you really need to have reliable, consistent grading. ID Technology provides that reliability and consistency quicker and more efficiently than older systems, which relied more on the skill and experience of the operator. Our potato clients are looking at returns on their investment in a year, a year-and-a-half. We think that will be a similar result for bell peppers, cucumbers, and other produce types we have in the pipeline.”

According to a press release, this innovative system utilizes an integrated suite of cameras, lighting, and software to size and grade bell peppers for color, size, weight, and even shape defects. The system also transmits live images of every bell pepper passing through the sorter to operators, thus allowing them to adjust on the fly, or see the effects of adjustments they are considering.

Matt Lonczynski, Sales Engineer, Exeter Engineering“It’s a game changer,” said Matt Lonczynski, Sales Engineer. “AI-powered grading gives packers some amazing gains in terms of speed and accuracy, especially compared to older systems. We are already seeing impressive accuracy rates of 90 percent.”

The bell pepper capability is one part of the upgrades made to ID Technology in its second major release, which includes a new camera hood and upgraded lighting.

“The new lighting was crucial for getting imagery of sufficient quality to successfully size and grade bell peppers,” said Batchman. “With better imagery in both visible and infrared light spectrums, the AI gives more accurate results.”

The ID Technology system has been applied to potatoes for over a year, with accuracy rates of 95 percent on some customers’ packing lines. The version 2.0 hardware, along with a software upgrade, now allows potato packers to use the AI to differentiate between three or more grades; they can also use the new “severity classification” feature to adjust for the severity of a variety of defects to move products from one category to another.

“With ‘severity classification,’ ID Technology is coming out with another unique feature,” said Lonczynski. “It really allows the sort of granular control that used to come only after an operator had years of experience. Now it’s automatic, the changes are made faster, and even a novice can achieve great results. That’s the power of AI.”

Currently, Exeter Engineering is testing a new version of ID Technology’s software suite, which will add the ability to sort sweet potatoes.

“Progress is good so far,” said Batchman. “Sweet potatoes present several unique challenges. We hope to have that capability by fall of 2022.”

Stick with ANUK for more industry news.

Last week, an official and dire-sounding warning about high nitrate levels in the city of Exeter’s water supply began appearing on social media sites, and with them came comments rife with speculation, fearful reactions and visions of impending doom. The water situation in the midsize foothill town, however, is not as dangerous or widespread as some of those who stumble across the notice without context imagine it is.

The city-issued caution can be read at cityofexeter.com/drinking-water-warning/.

Exeter’s Water Safe for Most

The reality, says Exeter’s Director of Public Works Daymon Qualls, is Exeter’s water remains safe for most consumers. It should not be consumed by infants and pregnant women until the nitrate levels drop, probably in the autumn when the dry season ends. The city will alert users when that happens.

The reason most Exeter residents can still draw safe water from their taps without excess worry right now has to do with how the city’s water system combines the output of all the city’s wells.

“Exeter has a loop water distribution system,” Qualls said via email. “Because all the water lines in the streets are connected, the water is blended. Only one well has nitrates at one part per million over the maximum contaminant level, and this well only produces water when there is a large demand on the water system.”

The contaminated well, known as E6-W, cannot be taken offline now, or the city would run shy of water to meet businesses and residents’ needs. To compensate for its contamination, E6-W is being left out of the loop as much as possible.

“Because of operational changes we have made, this well has been running approximately two hours per day,” Qualls wrote. “This water is blended with water from other wells which reduces the concentration. We still encourage women that are pregnant or nursing, and children younger than 6-months-old to drink bottled water.”

Nitrates Can Kill

According to the drinking water warning issued by the city on May 13 and available via the city’s website, staff at Public Works became aware of the issue when samples from two days earlier returned unacceptable results. The notice’s opening line made the danger to consumers clear:

“Water sample results received (May 11, 2022) showed nitrate levels of 11 milligrams per liter. This is above the nitrate standard, or maximum contaminant level (MCL), of 10 milligrams per liter. Nitrate in drinking water is a serious health concern for infants less than six months old.”

While the good news is the city’s single heavily contaminated well is testing barely above the state’s standard for safety, it can still prove harmful to a small at-risk population. Nitrates can hamper the body’s ability to carry oxygen via the bloodstream, and in infants this can lead to serious illness and death. The same is true for pregnant women and those nursing infants.

Symptoms of nitrate poisoning include blue skin and shortness of breath. Anyone displaying these symptoms should immediately seek medical care.

For now, Exeter’s water should not be given to infants or used by pregnant women, but it should also not be used for mixing baby feeding formulas or juices for small children. Boiling the water can make the problem worse by concentrating the nitrates. Those with other health issues who are concerned about the effects of high nitrates should consult their medical providers.

Drought Makes Contamination Worse

The city is also asking residents to conserve water wherever and whenever possible. Just as boiling the contaminated water will drive off the water and leave behind the nitrates, so too will dropping the local water table to even deeper depths. As the state’s worst recorded drought forces farmers and water suppliers to draw ever more groundwater, they also make the nitrates more intense in all local wells.

Nitrates are a class of run-off contaminants that comes from a variety of sources, like industry, and agriculture, as well as naturally occurring ones. They also leech into the water supply from septic systems and storm drains, and from areas fertilized for ag and landscaping use.

Another good bit of news is nitrate plumes move fairly quickly below ground, meaning once sources of runoff are identified, they can be removed and well eventually remediated.

“It is impossible to stop nitrate infiltration,” Qualls said. “Nitrates move through the ground and eventually reach the water table. The removal process is an ongoing and relatively expensive process. The most common treatment methods are ion exchange, distillation and reverse osmosis.”

Fixing It Now and Fixing It Later

More good news: The contamination shouldn’t spread.

“Based on historical test results, we do not expect any other wells to be impacted,” Qualls wrote. “Nitrates move through the ground relatively fast and cannot be stopped.”

Exeter officials have the problem in hand, with a firm plan for eliminating the contamination from the city supply quickly as possible.

“Our long-term plan is to add additional wells to the system,” Qualls wrote. “In the short term, we are completing repairs on Well E9-W, which is currently offline, and hope to have it producing water sometime in July. Rehabilitation of another well is on hold until the aforementioned well is back in service.”

When that happens, the contaminated well will go offline for good.

“Once other sources are activated or rehabilitated, Well E6-W will be placed in a stand-by condition,” according to Qualls. “That means it will only be used in case of an extreme emergency, such as a large fire.”

The Tooleville Water Problem

Despite having a fix for its own water worries, Exeter is still being forced by the state to enlarge its water works to include the 79 residents that make up the tiny community of Tooleville, just east of Exeter in the orange orchards spreading south along Spruce Avenue.

Residents in Tooleville have been on a quest for safe drinking water for decades. Finally, in the summer of 2021, another remarkably hot and dry season, the California Division of Drinking Water mandated the cooperation of Exeter in supplying water to its smaller neighbor. The cities were given six months to reach an agreement or faced having the state impose itself.

Now, three months after that deadline elapsed, the state has backed off in light of Exeter’s new worry woes. During a public hearing on the issue last month, a representative of the state told those on hand the issue of folding Tooleville into Exeter’s water system would not be realized until 2030 at the earliest.

But the residents of Tooleville need safe, clean water in their homes, so talks between the two communities’ representatives goes on.

“The city of Exeter and Tooleville are still in negotiations regarding a potential connection to serve the residents of Tooleville, and the state is receiving regular updates on our progress,” Qualls wrote. “It is understood by all parties that Exeter’s water system, in its current condition, does not have sufficient capacity to support a connection at this time.”

For more information on Exeter’s water issues, contact Public Works at (559) 592-3318, ext. 2.

The state of California took the first step to order and potentially pay for the city of Exeter in Tulare County to extend water service to hundreds of homes in a nearby town without safe and stable drinking water.

For decades, the 340 residents of Tooleville have relied on contaminated groundwater as their main source of tap water, as reported by The Fresno Bee Aug. 18. The small town sits next to the Friant-Kern Canal, which delivers passing water to agricultural operations and other communities.

Drought and declining groundwater levels this summer only made the situation worse, as one of two community wells stopped pumping on July 21 and residents relied on bottled water for a day.

Exeter’s water system currently reaches less than a mile away.

The State Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water in an Aug. 23 letter took the first step toward ordering consolidation of the Tooleville water system with the City of Exeter.

The letter, provided by advocacy organization Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, says the city and Tooleville Mutual Non-Profit Water Association have six months to negotiate a voluntary agreement to consolidate before state officials step in. Requests for comments made to those agencies were not immediately returned. This story will be updated.

That does not necessarily mean the state will order consolidation at the end of the six-month period. In East Orosi, for example, a consolidation order came more than a year after the six-month letter.

Consolidation projects can take years to negotiate, design and construct. Still, the Leadership Counsel called the decision a victory for water justice.

“Communities of color throughout the San Joaquin Valley are disproportionately impacted by drinking water contamination, and communities like Tooleville were declared ‘nonviable’ and unworthy of investment by Tulare County in its 1973 general plan,” said Michael Claiborne, an attorney with Leadership Counsel.

“In Tooleville’s case, consolidation can help to right these wrongs by providing safe and affordable drinking water to a community that has struggled with water contamination and disinvestment for decades,” he said.

Tulare County supervisors have said the state is to blame for Tooleville and other communities’ water woes.

State laws adopted in 2015 and 2018 gave the State Water Board authority to order consolidation and to pay for the receiving city’s costs for any capacity lost and the expense of extending service.

The stated intention is to bring safe and affordable drinking water to disadvantaged communities, which have historically received less public funding for infrastructure.

By law, the state has authority to order consolidation in cases when a public water system or small water system, “serving a disadvantaged community, consistently fails to provide an adequate supply of safe drinking water.”

Forced consolidation is one of the State Water Resources Control Board’s primary strategies to bring safe and affordable drinking water to traditionally underserved communities without basic infrastructure.

Several water districts have agreed to voluntarily consolidate to provide safe drinking water to neighboring communities. Those actively underway include systems in and around Madera, Tulare and Rosamond.

Other active consolidation projects in the San Joaquin Valley were mandated by the state, including East Orosi CSD with Orosi Public Utility District, and South Kern Mutual Water Company and Old River Mutual Water Company with the city of Bakersfield.

A project to consolidate Ceres West Mobile Home Park with the city of Ceres was completed in 2020, and Pratt Mutual Water Company connected to the city of Tulare in a project completed in 2016, according to the State Water Board.

This story was originally published August 24, 2021, 2:33 PM.

The tiny South Valley community of Tooleville faced a major setback this week in its years-long struggle for clean drinking water – but advocates say the fight isn’t over.

The Exeter City Council voted unanimously to scrap plans that would move Exeter’s water system toward consolidation with neighboring Tooleville, a rural, unincorporated community of about 80 households that has struggled for years with dirty water.

The plan could have solved Tooleville’s water issues, but Exeter officials feared the additional burden on the city’s water system, which they said is already in need of repair.

“We have to take care of Exeter first,” Exeter Mayor Mary Waterman-Philpot said Wednesday, a day after the council’s vote. “We don’t have the water capacity and the ability to service another community.”

In August, the council approved the Water Master Plan, which examined the city’s water infrastructure and its capacity to serve another community.

Waterman-Philpot said the plan showed the city would need to spend millions to upgrade its water lines, forcing officials to raise water and sewer rates for Exeter residents to fund the new services. The mayor said it wouldn’t be fair to Exeter residents and the City Council is “not interested” in adding to the city’s debt or stretching its workforce to help out Tooleville.

Michael Claiborne is an attorney with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability who represented the Tooleville water board during the negotiations with Exeter.

He said Exeter’s decision Tuesday night was “stunning” since the two groups seemed to be on a promising path.

“What they really did was delay for a year and a half ... and then reach a result that it appears they were always going to reach,” Claiborne said. “They (the City Council) slammed the door shut pretty hard for completely unjustified reasons.”

Claiborne said he had discussions with state officials who said they were willing to work with Exeter to address debt refinancing and paying for new infrastructure.

Mayor Waterman-Philpot said the council never got anything in writing about how the state could fund or help Exeter in aiding Tooleville.

That’s because the state can’t commit until the water project application process is complete. Either Exeter or Tooleville must first submit a planning study for review by the state, according to Bryan Potter, State Water Resources Board Tulare District Engineer.

“They need to come to an agreement if that’s what’s going to happen,” Potter said.

Tooleville has struggled with dirty water for decades. Tulare County reports on Tooleville’s water found the system contained high concentrations of pesticides and other contaminants. And it’s not the only Central Valley community facing the issues.

Pedro Hernandez, Leadership Counsel organizer who has worked closely with the Tooleville residents, said the plan for Tooleville now is to go straight to the state and force Exeter to help Tooleville. A similar mandate was issued for the city of Tulare to consolidate with the unincorporated neighboring community of Matheny Tract in 2016.

“We are going to have to go above the City of Exeter to the state,” Hernandez said. “The state can do this and this failure to act in good faith is only building the case to mandate the consolidation.”

Advocates said they’re also exploring other funding possibilities but have yet to find a solution that doesn’t involve Exeter throwing a lifeline to Tooleville.

City Manager Adam Ennis said the council is focused on addressing the city’s budget and other city services.

“The city’s got a lot of things going on right now,” Ennis said. “They’re (the council) seeing it as not a good time to add something else.”

This story was originally published September 11, 2019, 6:05 PM.

The town of Tooleville in Tulare County is once again without water.

The town, which has struggled for years with dropping groundwater levels and contamination issues, saw its wells dry up over the weekend.

On July 15, residents called nonprofit Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability reporting very low water pressure and some with no water at all, said Elvia Olea, policy advocate for Leadership Counsel.

This is the second town in Tulare County to lose water this summer. East Orosi, about 30 miles north of Tooleville, was without water for 24 hours when one of its two wells went down July 12. A pump was installed and restored water to East Orosi.

Tooleville, meanwhile, is surviving on water hauled in to storage tanks. The town has two storage tanks which were installed by Visalia-based nonprofit SelfHelp Enterprises. On Saturday, the community was switched over to the storage tanks which started receiving 27,000 gallons of hauled water per day after the outage.

But another problem arose over the weekend. A joint in the connection system to the storage tanks came undone. The town had to switch back to the well while the leak was repaired. Because pressure was taken off the well for a day, water levels rebounded enough to sustain people. But the well will probably not last, said Michael Claiborne, directing attorney for Leadership Counsel.

“It’s only a matter of time before they go out again,” Claiborne said. “Water levels just are not sufficient to keep this system going.”

Tooleville sits in a sea of agriculture fields. Farmers received little to no surface water this year because of the ongoing drought, pushing them to rely heavily on pumping groundwater. That has driven Tooleville’s water levels lower, Claiborne said.

Drilling new, deeper wells in Tooleville isn’t an option, he added. Test wells have shown that new wells would produce water that is unsafe to drink. Tooleville experienced similar problems almost exactly a year ago when its wells went dry. It’s a recurring problem and the only permanent solution is hooking the town up to the water system of the nearby city of Exeter, Claiborne said. That process, called a consolidation, was resisted by Exeter for decades. But the state of California has the authority to mandate consolidation, and in August 2021, it began that process for Exeter and Tooleville. That spurred Exeter into voluntary negotiations.

“The long-term solution here is consolidation,” Olea said. “In the meantime, though, obviously residents are still struggling to do their everyday activities with very little water.”

Most residents in Tooleville rely on bottled water which has been provided by the state since 2014 because of groundwater contamination. But the well water is used for all other domestic purposes such as flushing toilets, washing dishes and taking showers.

The lack of domestic water is compounded by the July heat.

Olea anticipates that Tooleville will remain on hauled water for the rest of the summer. But it’s not the only solution being discussed. Given the severe lack of water, advocates have been meeting with state and county officials to discuss other temporary solutions.

One proposal on the table is a pipeline from Exeter to Tooleville, similar to the consolidation. But instead of connecting every household to the system, the pipeline would run to the storage tanks. It would act as a more reliable source of emergency water than hauled water.

“I’m just really worried about the logistics of hauling water out there every day, I think that’s going to be an absolute challenge,” Claiborne said. “And so getting a connection in place that’s reliable, doesn’t require truckers to go out on a daily basis would be really, really helpful.”

Exeter is open to the idea as long as the state provides funding for the pipeline and a new well, Claiborne said.

Tulare County staff have also proposed connecting Exeter to Tooleville via fire hydrants. Tooleville is only about a mile away from Exeter, so it is possible, Claiborne said.

As for the long-term consolidation, voluntary consolidation negotiations were extended by the state until the end of the month. So far, it sounds like Exeter city officials will probably be on board as long as the state provides funding for the connection and water system improvements in Exeter, Claiborne said.

“If that’s where they’re at, this consolidation can get done because I do think there’s funding available,” he said. “I think that’s a reasonable agreement.”

SJV Water is an independent, nonprofit news site dedicated to covering water in the San Joaquin Valley.

This story was originally published July 18, 2022, 4:33 PM.