How Drones Can Benefit Water Pump Stations

How can drones for water pump stations help after a storm?

Drones for water pump stations give operators a fast visual check of the site after severe weather. A drone can fly over the pump house, the fence line, the access road and the discharge area soon after a storm passes, so you learn what is damaged before you send a crew out. That order matters. A crew that arrives already knowing a fence section is down, a road is washed out and the pumps are running will load the right parts and spend less time on the first trip.

The use is not hypothetical. According to a DroneXL report from June 2024, a state transportation department in Arizona added drones to its year-round maintenance program for 50 pump stations that remove storm runoff from freeway sections in the Phoenix area. The drones check for cracks, leaks and worn parts, and they reach upper pipe sections that are hard to access.

The storm-specific evidence is thinner than the routine maintenance evidence. We found no water utility source describing a pump-station drone check after a specific storm, so treat the storm workflow as a practice to test on your own sites rather than a proven result.

What problems do pump stations face today?

Pump stations are spread across the service area, often visited only on a schedule, and exposed to the weather that causes the most trouble. Pumps, fences, gates and access roads can all take damage in a storm. The first question after a storm is usually where to send people, and for years the answer came from someone driving out to look.

The labor side is tightening. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 131,000 jobs for water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators existed in 2025, most of them with local government. BLS projects employment in that group to decline 7% from 2024 to 2034, with about 10,700 openings a year on average, mostly from replacement needs.

The 2025 AWWA Utility Benchmarking Survey, reported by BusinessWire in May 2025, found that 21% of utility employees are eligible to retire within five years, and utilities reported an average vacancy rate of 9%. A fall 2024 water workforce survey from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management found that 65% of operators and 57% of managers answered No when asked whether their utility has enough operators.

The UNC Environmental Finance Center blog, citing EPA workforce data, reports that 30% to 50% of water sector workers are eligible for retirement within 5 to 10 years. Its summary of the 2024 Utility Management Survey found nearly 70% of respondents concerned about their future workforce. When fewer people cover more sites, a fast remote look at the site earns its place.

What are the main benefits of drones at a pump station?

The main benefit is speed of information. A drone check gives you a view of the whole site, including parts a person would have to climb to see or walk a long way to reach. It also gives you the same view every time, so the photos from this storm can be compared with the photos from the last one.

Reaching hard-to-access parts is the second benefit. The Arizona program's drones reach upper pipe sections that are hard to access, and they look there for cracks, leaks and worn parts. A thermal camera adds another kind of check. In a vendor case study, a confined-space drone with a thermal camera inspected wet wells at pumping stations and identified leaks from cooler, damp areas. The study says pump station downtime was significantly reduced, but it gives no numbers, so treat that as a claim to verify on your own sites.

Safety is a benefit too, though the sources do not measure it. Fewer people walking an embankment or entering a site in the hours after a storm means less exposure to hazards nobody has checked yet.

How does a drone work at a pump station day to day?

A storm check starts before the storm. The operator keeps a saved flight route for each site, with the fence line, gate, pump house, access road and discharge point marked, and a baseline set of photos taken on a dry day. After a storm, the team confirms conditions allow flight, launches the drone and flies the saved route.

The images come back to the operator, who compares them with the baseline. Anything that looks wrong gets tagged with a location, a time and a short note, and the crew decides if it needs a site visit. Wet well work follows a separate plan with a confined-space drone, and only after the site has been cleared for that work.

The Arizona program ties drone checks to regular upkeep, and according to the same DroneXL report, its crews also run pumps without water in the system. That pairing is a good model: the drone finds the problem, and the crew confirms and repairs it.

Which areas of a pump station can a drone cover?

Most pump stations are a small campus rather than a single building, and drones for water pump stations can cover the whole footprint. The zones below show where the flight time earns its keep. Each zone gets its own saved route and its own baseline photos, so changes are easy to spot.

Enclosed spaces are the exception. Inside a wet well the job calls for a confined-space drone and a cleared entry plan, not a general aircraft. Keep the routine checks outside and reserve enclosed spaces for work that truly needs them.

How do drones work alongside existing staff?

A drone does not run a pump station. It gives the people who already run it a faster view of the site, so the operator can decide where to send a truck and what to bring. Your staff stays in place, and your staff decides, repairs, logs and calls.

This is where we fit. We pick the right drone for the site, lease it through financing, deploy and integrate it with your routines, train your staff to fly it and read the images, and service the unit nationwide. The goal is a drone working alongside your existing team, so the first look comes from the air and the repairs still come from your people.

What drives the savings, and how large are they?

Savings come from fewer unnecessary trips, less time spent walking the site to look for damage, and faster decisions about which problems need a crew at all. The sources we reviewed do not give a verified figure for hours saved at pump stations, so we do not offer one.

The best-sourced savings figure comes from sewer work, not pump stations. A vendor case study on sewer inspection reports that most users benefit from a 40% reduction in inspection cost per linear meter and almost half the time needed to inspect the same area. That is vendor-reported and about sewers, so use it as a reason to measure your own hours.

The workforce figures above describe scarcity rather than savings. When vacancy rates run at 9% and many operators say they lack enough colleagues, every hour spent on routine looks at remote sites is an hour your team may not have. Measure the hours your team spends on a storm check today, then compare them after the first season.

What can a drone not do at a pump station?

A drone is a sensor and a fast look, not a repair crew. It cannot tighten a bolt, replace a worn pump part, clear debris from an intake or shut down a station. Those jobs stay with your staff and contractors.

It cannot see everything either. Visual and thermal images show surface damage, moisture and heat, but they do not replace a physical inspection of buried pipe or a structural assessment. Wind and rain can ground a flight, and airspace and site rules still apply, so every storm plan needs a crew visit as the fallback.

Electric utilities offer a related but separate picture. EPRI tests found drones can be used effectively to assess storm damage on utility distribution systems, and a utility used drones for storm damage surveys after a derecho, according to a T&D World report. Those results concern power lines rather than water, so pilot one or two pump stations before planning a wider network.

How do we get started at a pump station?

Start with a free site assessment. We walk the stations you choose, map the routes, note access roads, fences, pump houses and wet wells, and check the conditions that affect flying. That tells us which drone fits each site and if one aircraft can cover several nearby stations.

After the assessment you receive a quote, and the payment comes in the quote. Drones are leased through financing, which keeps upfront capital low. We deploy and integrate the drone, set up the saved routes and baseline photos, train your staff, and provide go-live support before routine checks move to the drone.

Begin with drones for water pump stations at one or two sites, learn what the images show on your ground, then add the next stations. Our technicians service the unit nationwide, so a pilot at one station can grow across your network with the same routine.