Jon Borden is the President of RH Borden and Company, a Salt Lake City-based firm applying advanced sensor technology and data-driven solutions to modernize wastewater and sewer systems across the US. Under his leadership, RH Borden pioneered digital twin and condition-based maintenance strategies, enabling cities to streamline maintenance and deliver the nation’s largest inflow and infiltration study in New York with more than 400 sensors deployed. With a background in Fortune 100 IT program management, Jon brings proven digital transformation expertise to aging infrastructure.

Kwin Peterson is a Senior Account Manager at RH Borden and Company. He has supported more than 60 collection systems in becoming more efficient through condition-based maintenance and innovative assessment tools. Kwin also serves on the San Francisco Bay Section Collection Systems Committee. Before joining RH Borden, he spent 17 years in the electric utilities industry working in education, public relations, and technical committee support.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:03] Jon Borden explains the significance of inflow and infiltration (I&I) in wastewater systems
• [3:34] What challenges do agencies face in identifying and preventing I&I?
• [5:18] Kwin Peterson highlights the misconception that building new treatment plants is the only solution for I&I
• [6:08] How the severity of I&I varies based on infrastructure age and climate
• [7:52] The unique I&I challenges faced by Northern California’s wastewater systems
• [11:44] Introducing the digital twin technology and its application in monitoring sewer systems
• [14:33] The five steps of BASINiQ to address I&I with data-driven insights
• [24:40] How an understanding of the financial impact of reducing water consumption can motivate decision-makers

In this episode…

Wastewater systems across the US are grappling with the costly and often invisible problem of inflow and infiltration (I&I). This issue — when excess water from rain, groundwater, or snowmelt enters the sewer system — drains resources, causes system overflows, and burdens treatment plants. What can be done to solve this problem and avoid unnecessary costs?

As experts in wastewater management, Jon Borden and Kwin Peterson explain how hidden water can unnecessarily increase operating costs by millions annually. This challenge is exacerbated by the difficulty of locating leaks within underground infrastructure, which often leads municipalities to build new treatment plants instead of fixing the root cause. With case studies from across the country, Jon and Kwin highlight how agencies can now deploy thousands of sensors that create precise virtual models of their sewer systems, rather than accepting expensive overflows and building new treatment plants. These digital replicas, combined with high-density LiDAR scans and real-time data, pinpoint leaks down to the manhole and quantify the cost of each problem — a true paradigm shift. Agencies can also leverage BASINiQ, which delivers actionable, color-coded maps, transforming complex engineering data into clear, cost-saving management decisions for city leaders.

In this episode of Saving Our Sewers, John Corcoran of Rise25 chats with Jon Borden, the President of RH Borden and Company, and Kwin Peterson, the company’s Senior Account Manager, to discuss the pervasive issue of inflow and infiltration (I&I). They explore the major causes of I&I across the US, delve into the transformative impact of digital twins and sensors in reducing treatment costs, and highlight the success of large-scale sensor deployments in cities like Great Neck and San Rafael.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Jon Borden on LinkedIn
• Kwin Peterson on LinkedIn
• RH Borden
• John Corcoran on LinkedIn
• Rise25
• BASINiQ I&I Location Services
• ASCE Infrastructure Report Card

Quotable Moments: 

• “Inflow and infiltration (I&I) is when water gets into the sewer system from outside the sewer system.”
• “If we could just go find that hole, we could fix it for far, far less than that.”
• “It’s really something that is consistently a problem, but the severity depends on infrastructure and climate.”
• “We’re almost sending out this sensor army that can then see all the flow through all the manholes.”
• “We’re no longer guessing. We’re using data to make specific actions and measure effectiveness.”

Action Steps: 

1. Identify and fix leaks in the system: Locating and repairing leaks can significantly reduce excess water entering the wastewater system, saving money.
2. Adopt digital twin technology for monitoring: By replicating real-world systems virtually, cities can pinpoint problems before they escalate, optimizing resources.
3. Deploy high-density sensor networks: Using sensors throughout the system enables real-time data collection, improving decision-making and system efficiency.
4. Utilize weather data to predict I&I impacts: Integrating accurate weather forecasting helps municipalities plan for rainfall and reduce unnecessary treatment costs.
5. Engage stakeholders with clear, visual data: Presenting data in a straightforward, color-coded format makes it easier to gain support for infrastructure improvements.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by RH Borden, the leading service provider for innovative technologies that modernize wastewater collection system maintenance.

As Smart Cities evolve, RH Borden empowers communities to leverage data, optimize maintenance resources, and improve system performance. Their digital twin solutions help teams work more efficiently, minimize redundant maintenance, and pinpoint infrastructure issues with precision.

Learn more about how RH Borden is shaping the future of wastewater system management by visiting rhborden.com.

Powered by Rise25 Podcast Production Company

Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:03 

The US Infrastructure Report Card gives the nation’s wastewater systems a grade of D+. Welcome to the Saving Our Sewers podcast, where we feature the practices, tools, technology, and ideas that will save our sewers. Let’s get into it.

Kwin Peterson: 00:20

Kwin Peterson here, host of the Saving Our Sewers podcast, where we feature city leaders, innovative engineers, and infrastructure experts who are shaping the future of rapidly growing municipalities through smarter technologies and data-driven solutions. Today, I’m with John Corcoran of Rise25. He’s done thousands of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, and today, we are flipping the script. Instead of me interviewing somebody, John is going to be interviewing us. John, thank you so much.

John Corcoran: 00:50

Yes, Kwin, great to have you here. And we have Jon Borden here as well from RH Borden. And I’m excited to be talking with you guys here today. And of course, we’re talking about inflow and infiltration, otherwise known as I&I. And it’s an issue that’s affecting a lot of different cities, municipalities from coast to coast.

We’re going to be breaking it down, explaining what you need to know about it. And of course, before we get into that, this episode is brought to you by RH Borden, which provides innovative technologies that modernize wastewater collection, system maintenance. And as smart cities have been evolving, RH Borden has been empowering communities to leverage data, optimize maintenance resources, and improve system performance. And their digital twin solutions help teams to work more efficiently, minimize redundant maintenance, and pinpoint infrastructure issues with precision. So if you want to learn more, you can go to rhborden.com and learn more about how they are shaping the future of wastewater systems management. All right guys. So let’s get into it. So first of all set the stage for me. Explain for us inflow and infiltration I’ll start with you, Jon.

Inflow and infiltration. Give me kind of a one-on-one level understanding of this issue and why it’s so relevant right now.

Jon Borden: 02:03 

You bet. Thanks, John. So inflow and infiltration. What is it in a nutshell? It’s when water gets into the sewer system from outside the sewer system.

So for example, if the rain gets into a sewer system or if groundwater gets into the sewer system, if snowmelt, if tide tidal influences goes into the sewer system, anything other than a house or a business providing water into the system, the reason that’s a problem is there’s multiple, multiple problems with this. Number one is it takes up the capacity of the sewer system. So you might have an overflow because it was raining or it causes problems at the treatment plant where you’re treating water unnecessarily. In fact the national statistic is that for every ten MGD. MGD is the size of a treatment plant.

So a regularly sized treatment plant is probably spending somewhere between 1 to $5 million every year treating water that was never used by anybody. So it’s a significant problem. It’s one of the top problems in the country. I think the statistic is upwards of almost half of the water being treated today was never used. And that’s all because there are leaks and breaks in the system causing inflow and infiltration.

John Corcoran: 03:22

Well I’m a beginner here. So explain to me how the agencies misunderstand the types of water that are coming into the system.

Jon Borden: 03:34

For sure. For sure. So if I’m an agency owner, inflow and infiltration is really invisible to me. It can be a constant flow coming in. So I might set up my budget, my staffing and my resources to manage this treatment plant and suddenly realize I’m out of capacity at my treatment plant.

I got to build a whole nother treatment plant. Well, what’s actually happening is the water going into that plant actually could be prevented. And so maybe you could run at half of that capacity if you could find the inflow and infiltration in the system. If I could go find that little, if I could find that break in a pipe or that break in a manhole and fix it at the source, it would prevent that flow from ever getting to the treatment plant to begin with. So it’s something that’s a preventative measure.

The biggest challenge is finding it because this is underground infrastructure. And you can have a hole that’s the size of a quarter, that’s putting in a million gallons of water into the system every day. Wow. So it’s really difficult to find and locate, but if we could locate it, we would know how to fix it.

John Corcoran: 04:39 

Okay. And so. Yeah. Go ahead.

Kwin Peterson: 04:41 

I’m sorry. And just to just on this subject of misdiagnosis, it’s really it’s really not that people are misdiagnosing it, it’s that they don’t even know that this is possible to fix. This has been going on for so long. and finding the ene has proved to be so difficult that for most agencies, most of the operators, it is just almost a given that the only way that you’re going to take care of this is to increase capacity.

John Corcoran: 05:13

So they just kind of.

Kwin Peterson: 05:13

That’s easier than finding it. Yeah.

John Corcoran: 05:15

They just think that’s the only solution. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Borden: 05:18

We have some people that we’ve spoken to across the country where they’re really considering building whole new treatment plants simply because they can’t find their I&I. And that’s a very, very expensive prospect. I mean, treatment plants can be anywhere from 40 million to $400 million. And if we could just go find that hole, we could fix it for far, far less than that.

John Corcoran: 05:41

Wow, wow. So we’re going to get into some of the technologies that you’ve developed that help with this challenge. But let’s start with nationwide. So this is a challenge that’s affecting, you know, municipalities from coast to coast. What’s common amongst different agencies that are dealing with this challenge, and what’s different, and how is it different in different parts of the country?

Jon Borden: 06:08

You bet. Great question. So we started our assessments. We’re headquartered in Utah. So that’s where we kind of are the epicenter of our beginning.

One thing that we have found as we started in Utah is Utah has inflow and infiltration. And then we grew this program into Colorado and found that Colorado has infiltration. And then we found that everybody in the country has infiltration. So it’s really something that is consistently a problem. But there are some drivers as to the severity of it.

One of the drivers is the age of infrastructure. And so we see that oftentimes on the East Coast our infrastructure is a lot older. So you’re going to have a lot more inflow and infiltration down in the southern states. It really is kind of a mix because some of those cities are older. But there’s a lot of new growth down there as well.

It’s also very climate driven. So we’re finding Northern California versus Southern California. Northern California has a lot of challenges with Tiny. Southern California, not so much. And it just has to do with the amount of rainfall and the topography that’s going on in that.

So again, consistently a challenge across the country. But it’s a factor of age of infrastructure and, and the weather that you’re in. And that then impacts seasonality. Sometimes you get it in the spring for example in Northern California where you’ll get it year round in Alabama because it’s constantly raining. So those are the primary factors and timeline for I&I. .

 John Corcoran: 07:37

The Bay area has got a unique geography compared to other parts of the country. Unique climate regulatory system. Talk to me a little bit about the Bay area and what sorts of mini challenges you’ve seen here.

 Kwin Peterson: 07:52 

Yeah. So Northern California has had really intense rains, but not very often. One of the things we were talking about here a few minutes ago was the misdiagnosis, and the idea of just the only way to treat this is to build more infrastructure. There is one city on on the peninsula there now by San Francisco, that recently spent a half $1 billion, largely to treat this problem, to build a larger plant and to build storage so that when during one of those 4 or 5 weeks of the year when it’s really dumping water, they have a place to put and treat that water. And what’s crazy about that is, is that capacity is going to stand unused for the majority of the year, but it has to be there for this one problem.

The thing that really drives the Bay Area is we have this treasure called the San Francisco Bay. It’s ecologically diverse, very important and fragile, Given that there are tens of millions of people that are living around and contributing their wastewater to it. So there’s a very high environmental bar to clear here. And whenever you have a high environmental bar, you also have a regulatory bar. And kind of unique to Northern California.

We have a very high legal bar to cross. A lot of the cities here have been sued by environmental watchdog groups, and they are constantly being monitored, scrutinized. Every time there is a wastewater spill where water is getting out of the wastewater system and getting into the bay. There’s probably going to be a lawsuit that follows that, and that can get very expensive as well.

John Corcoran: 09:43

And so what are some similarities amongst different parts of the Bay area. Are the systems similar between, let’s say the North Bay, the South Bay. The East Bay.

Kwin Peterson: 09:53

Yeah, yeah. So everybody you know, we all think, oh I’m in a special situation here. And, you know, in many cases they are. But more often than not, the special case is I’m getting 13 times as much water when it rains, whereas you’re getting nine times more water when it rains. But it’s all kind of coming in the same way.

One of the things that we’re seeing in the Bay Area is you might be hilly and you might be flat, but everybody’s getting the same amount of rainfall. Really, the only apparent distinction is how is the new infrastructure versus old infrastructure? And a lot of Bay area communities, especially along the Peninsula, are kind of old, and in Marin County, kind of old. But in the East Bay, we have had a lot of growth and a lot of new infrastructure. And that is because it’s newer, just not as leaky.

Jon Borden: 10:44

If I could add also, the commonality of the sewer system is astounding. Its pipes are underground connected with manholes. Now there are, you know, a small percentage of unique situations, but really by far and wide, it’s a really pretty basic, simple infrastructure. It’s all gravity fed and therefore the failure points are very similar. You can have a break in a pipe, you can have a break in a joint, you can have a break in a manhole.

So just like Kwin described, the severity might be a range, but the types of failures are the same and the key is finding them. So it’s all about just locating that. But the similarity from one system to the next is uncanny. And everything that we found, it’s very, very similar to failure points.

John Corcoran: 11:32

So let’s talk about the tech stack. We’ll talk about the sensors and the technology that you’ve developed, Jon. Maybe you could start sensors and technology that you’ve developed to tackle this challenge.

Jon Borden: 11:44

Absolutely. So our company, the specialty that we are bringing to the industry, is digital twin based. And what does that mean? So a digital twin is when you take a replica of something in the physical world, and you analyze it in the virtual world. And so what we’re doing is we are digitizing systems using high density lidar to virtually recreate the geometries of the sewer system.

Now, specifically for ENE, we’re using digital twins to replicate manholes. And when you do that, you get all of the geometry down to the millimeter of a manhole. Now, why would you want the dimensional accuracy of a manhole? Well, it turns out at the bottom of a manhole, there are some very important dimensions. Dimensions such as slope, diameter of pipes, material of pipes, the depth of the trough.

And there is a really great equation that’s been in the industry for decades, I want to say centuries now. It’s actually, I think it was in the 1800s when it was developed. And it allows you to calculate flow if you know these dimensions. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. So we’re harvesting the dimensions from the manholes.

Then we’re using special sensors to look at water levels, and all that combination allows us to calculate that flow. The term that we use in the industry is it turns a manhole into a flume. And so it’s almost like the manhole is measuring its own flow. And we do that by the hundreds and even by the thousands. So we’re almost sending out this, this sensor army that can then see all the flow through all the manholes, all simultaneously in all rainstorms.

And because of that, we’re making the invisible visible. We’re bringing transparency to those flows instead of they’re all underground. We’re pulling it up into a digital twin of the entire collection system. And once we do that, we can see exactly where the I&I is coming in.

John Corcoran: 13:45

Wow. So bringing new technology that’s been adopted in other parts of society to a traditional system that hasn’t seen it before. Kwin, anything else you want to add on the tech stack or new technologies?

Kwin Peterson: 13:58

Just that it is something that this industry has never seen before. And when I bring it to engineers, they know the equation. They understand how it works. And it’s just never really been thought of before in the way that we’re presenting it. So it really is a paradigm shift on calculating this ini.

John Corcoran: 14:21

Yeah. Let’s talk about the programmatic approach to I&I reduction. There are five steps of basin IQ. Can you explain what that is?

Jon Borden: 14:33

Yeah. You bet. So basinIQ is the brand name that we’ve given to how we go about this. And it’s really it really is a program where a lot of the approaches historically have been a bit ad hoc. Trying a little bit this year over here and a little bit next year over there.

This really is a holistic view of how I go about assessing inflow and infiltration for an entire system. It’s five pieces. The first three are inputs and the last two are what we do with those inputs. So the inputs are number one for understanding the basin map. So we just need to know a map of the system.

And we have a spectrum from people who don’t even have a location in their system. They don’t even know where it is to others who are highly mature and have all that detail. And we take that input and understand how the system behaves just from the geometry of the system itself. That’s understanding the basins. The second piece is this high density sensor network.

Imagine, you know, 50 to 100 to 1000 sensors, all deployed simultaneously, all gathering data and talking to each other. That’s another input. And then the third input is the weather. So we have a very accurate weather network across the country. And we tap into that network through API’s in our computer systems, and we pull essentially a weather location or a weather forecast and history for every single manhole in our studies.

So the weather then goes back to the sensors and then the map of the basins. Those are the three inputs. The two outputs are the analytics that I just described where we were calculating flow by using a digital twin. And we pull all of that into data visualizations. And this is not a PDF report that we provide.

This is an interactive GIS map. And it makes all that information so accessible at our fingertips. And it codes everything red, yellow and green. So it’s very easy to click on the red. And it pops up the information and says that’s where your Eni is.

So that’s the five steps to basing IQ.

John Corcoran: 16:40

Kwin, what is it like when you show this to someone who’s been in this field for 30 years until they suddenly see this visualization of something that previously took, you know, sending a man down to go down and look at these different pipes and things like that. What was the reaction like?

Kwin Peterson: 16:58

The reaction is kind of what you would expect. It’s kind of like pulling a rabbit out of a hat because there’s two things to think about here. One is the reason that we want to do this visualization. And the reason for it is the people who are doing the work are almost never the people who are writing the checks, and the people who are writing the checks, the city councils, the district boards, they don’t really understand what’s going on here. And when we’re able to put up that data on the screen and it’s color coded red, yellow, green, you can click on it, you can see a rainstorm and a huge spike of water.

And then you can say that a spike of water cost us $20,000. Suddenly it becomes a dead simple management decision on the part of people who really don’t have the technical understanding. So it’s very freeing for our wastewater people who understand this, because then they don’t have to make their decision makers experts. You just show red means bad, and bad means $20,000. And then the argument is over.

The response that I get when I show this to people is I had one guy say, that’s my system. I said, oh, you’re already doing this. He said, no, but that’s what I would want to do. And I haven’t been able to figure it out, or I’ve had people who had kind of given up on their ability to do anything, and they look at it and say, now I know what to do. I had an incident with a city that’s in San Mateo County just a few weeks ago where we were able to say, okay, you have this spike.

It is being caused by this specific problem. We know how to fix that specific problem, but it’s going to cost money. And on the other side of it is this problem that costs you $20,000 every time you have a rainstorm, and then they can go back to the city council and again get that problem fixed. And so it’s no longer throwing your hands up and saying, there’s just nothing I can do about it. And there’s a palpable sense of relief.

What was it, John? Somebody said this to us last week. I was giddy when we showed them the data that we had off the dashboard.

Jon Borden: 19:21

One of the foremost experts in the industry who said that. Yes.

John Corcoran: 19:26

Wow. Jon, tell us about Great Neck on Long Island. This is a city that you worked with where they were. I understand that they were expecting a 5 to 10 year time frame, and you were able to help them in a period of like 4 or 5 months?

Jon Borden: 19:43 

Yes. In fact, we just presented this as the national case study at the New York conference this week in Manhattan. So we’re very delighted to present this system as the owners of the system are very progressive in their understanding of digital twins, and they leverage that wherever they can. And as a result, they’re having tremendous success in the quality and outcomes of their system. And one of the challenges that they have had is how do we set up our 5 to 10 year plan for capital investment, meaning, what are we going to fix in the next 5 to 10 years, and how much is it going to cost us?

And again, going after this biggest challenge, which is inflow and infiltration. Now normally when someone tackles that, it takes them about 5 to 10 years to just diagnose the problem. And they engaged us and we deployed in their system. They had about an 80 mile system, and we deployed a sensor about every 1 to 2 to about every 2 to 3 manholes. So we deployed 423 sensors simultaneously.

It’s the largest sensor network of its kind to tackle Eni ever in US history. And we did it. And within four months, the study was complete and we had identified 74 locations that they needed to repair. Now, that would have taken them 5 to 10 years, and we did it in ten, I think 20 times less time. And also at half the cost.

So when we can deliver those types of results, it really is paradigm-shifting. And we’re super excited with our partnership. Very successful in that study.

John Corcoran: 21:27

Wow. Kwin, tell me about a Bay area case study that you were able to qualify for the reduction.

Kwin Peterson: 21:36

Yeah. So this was in Marin County, city of San Rafael. And like everybody else in the Bay area, they’ve been suffering through Eni for decades. We were able to do two rounds of study in the winter of 20 2425. They took that data, and between April and the beginning of the winter of 20 2526, they were able to use that to find a break in the system and repair that.

And what we saw in this year’s data, again, we’re repeating this to see how well it worked. We were able to see that in that one basin where they made that repair there ini was reduced by more than half over what we saw last year. And this just goes back to this idea that we’re no longer guessing. We’re using data to take specific actions, and then we’re using data to measure how effective those actions were. And that’s another one of my joys is to be able to give that to one of my operators and have them go to their governing body and say, here’s data that says, we did a good job and we saved this amount of money.

John Corcoran: 22:51 

It’s so clear. You know, it’s so clear. Like. Like black and white. Here you go.

You can. You can see it, right? Yeah. Very clearly. Jon, let’s ask you about the future.

What do you see the future for smart sewers and what advice do you have for agencies that may be watching this about, you know, what steps they should take or what they should do?

Jon Borden: 23:11 

Absolutely. Well, the future is bright because we are no longer on the receiving end, unable to take action. But in order for us to get into that positive space, we have to change. We have to change. This industry is severely understaffed.

It’s aging and it’s growing, and that’s a combination that’s really a challenge nationwide. But we can totally tackle it. We just have to do it in a whole different way. The concept is and this is a concept that’s common across all infrastructure. And it sounds like I want to take a high density of sensors.

I want to deploy them out in the field on the edge. I want that data to flow to the internet, and I want machine learning and AI to tell me what I need to do. That’s exactly what we’re doing. And we see that concept everywhere today. And we now have the ability to deploy that.

That’s perhaps been the biggest challenge is not the concept but the deployment. How do we deploy that? And that’s one thing we’re excited that we’ve got now with BASINiQ. So if there’s anybody listening to the podcast that’s interested in moving into that space, give us a call. We know how to do it.

We’ve done, I think, 70 studies at this point that have all been successful, a very repeatable process. And we can help you today.

John Corcoran: 24:33

Jon, Kwin, any final thoughts on what agencies should do if they’re watching this and thinking about taking next steps?

Kwin Peterson: 24:40 

You know, I’m a big fan of numbers and especially numbers that have a dollar sign in front of them. My advice to anybody who’s looking at their eyes and wondering, how are we going to get this taken care of, is to find out how much a gallon of water or a million gallons of water, a thousand gallons of water. How much is that costing you every time it goes into your plant? That number is remarkable and very motivating to your governing body. You can say, hey, if we could knock this down by 25%, we would save X number of dollars.

John Corcoran: 25:20

Yeah, yeah that’s great. Jon, Kwin, thanks for the overview here today. Where can people go to, you know, find out more or reach out if they have questions?

Jon Borden: 25:30 

Yeah rhborden.com is our website. Hop on there, and you can get a treasure trove of information.

John Corcoran: 25:37

All right. Great. Thanks so much, guys.

Jon Borden: 25:38

Thanks, John.

Outro: 25:39

Thanks for listening to the Saving Our Sewers podcast. We’ll be back next time with more insights you can use. Be sure to click and subscribe to get future episodes.