When it rains in Lehigh Acres, a community composed of 110 square miles with 311 miles of canals, it doesn’t always rain the same amount throughout the community. Heavy rains can be reported in areas that could become flooded while other areas may get but a tenth of an inch of rain or none at all.

But for the East County Water Control District (ECWCD) to make sure storm water is handled properly and canal structures are activated to allow water through, they must know what the rainfall is in inches and what are the levels of canals, from rains and more serious storms.

This is where Tim Browning of Lehigh, comes in. He is a lead water level monitoring technician and it is his job to report this information to David Lindsay and others so proper maintenance can be maintained.

Browning said he gets that information from his office, now in a supply shed, but later he will move into the new administration building with the computers he uses to get the information.

“It’s impossible for our workers to be everywhere when there are heavy rains during the rainy season, during a tropical depression or even a hurricane,” Browning said.

That information, about the number of inches of rainfall all over Lehigh and the level of the canals, comes to Browning from 68 computerized sites in the community, by way of transmitted information from where the rain is falling.

“That way we know the situation. We know heavy rains may be pouring in one area of Lehigh and that the canals are rising while in another area, there is practically no rain. This keeps us informed all the time,” Browning said.

These monitored sites include about two dozen “well points,” where water levels are monitored in canals and in shallow ground water sites.

Browning said the sites send the information to his computers every five minutes and every hour and then a daily report. That information is forwarded immediately to David Lindsay, the executive director of the East County Water District (ECWCD).

“With that information, we make instant decisions where there may be problems and we are quick to solve them by sending our crew to those areas,” Lindsay said.

The information is sent by Lindsay to members of the board of the ECWCD and to the South Florida Water Management District.

“We don’t report this information to the media such as the TV stations. We act on it to correct problems to keep Lehigh protected from flooding and to make sure water moves to the Caloosahatchee River, while maintaining safe levels of water in the 311 miles of canals,” Lindsay said.

“We can move gate control structures to move water quicker through the canals using this information, too,” Browning said. And gates can be lowered by devices at the site.

“It’s all done through radio modems with transmission signals sent to the ECWCD,” Browning said.

Before the high tech devices were used, Manager Lindsay said workers were sent to different areas. It took a lot of time and when they had to move water structures, made out of wooden boards up and down, it could be dangerous to the workers.

Browning called it a total picture of rainfall and water levels in the canals.

He lives in Lehigh with his wife and two children. His family is well-known in the area. His father, Al Browning was a law enforcement officer for 20 years patrolling Lehigh. He retired in the late 1980s.

The water collection points are not like the inexpensive rain gauges that residents may use in their yard to measure rainfall.

“These devices are sophisticated. Water falls into a wide open area at the top of the aluminum water measuring devices and then down into a trough which tips the water into the measuring area and then deposes of it,” Browning said. They are located on top of equipment often high in the air, Browning said.

Sites providing this information can still operate in an electrical outage due to alternative sources of power,” Browning said.

Lindsay says he likes the high tech measuring devices because it saves time in getting workers to certain spots. He said that in earlier days, it might take half a day to find out where the problems were and rest of the day to make repairs.

He noted that the sites monitoring the water levels can raise and lower gates. They will work with alternative power devices during severe storms and outages of electricity, he said.

David Lindsay said Browning’s office with the monitoring computers will be situated in the new administrative building on E. County Lane off Lee Blvd., sometime in April when the structure is expected to be finished.

He said a grand opening is planned for May 17 for the public.

Lindsay noted that about 80 percent of the water control structures have been retrofitted from using wooden boards to the installation of metal sliding gates.

He also said that heavy trains often come from tropical depressions that don’t move while hurricanes usually pass through quickly. The water goes to the four outfalls into the river in the end.

“The 26 rainfall sites are spread out all over Lehigh. We really get a total picture of where the rain is at all times,” Browning said. The water collecting equipment cost around $200 per device, but lasts for a long, he said.

“It’s made us more efficient in how we deal with water issues,” Lindsay said.