DELAWARE — Delaware County commissioners approved a new way to utilize artificial intelligence for sanitary sewer inspection footage during their Monday meeting.
Tiffany Maag, sanitary engineer for the Delaware County Regional Sewer District, proposed contracting with Edge AI Solutions to help code the district’s closed-circuit television footage.
The sewer district uses CCTV via a camera inside a pipe to identify issues within the system. Those issues are then coded by a human.
Coding refers to designating a sewer issue/crack/leak on a one to five scale, with one being a small issue and five being a big issue.
“When a human codes [an identified issue], it’s kind of subjective,” Erik McPeek, deputy director of operations at the district, told Delaware Source.
“What this will do at least is remove that subjectivity.”
McPeek said the $79,000, one-year contract with Edge AI Solutions will not take jobs from any people who have coded footage previously.
The three commissioners unanimously approved a service agreement with the company for coding and data transmission.
“We’re going to prioritize our aging and deteriorating infrastructure first, so we can make sure that we get a proper O&M (operations and maintenance) on that infrastructure as quickly as possible,” Maag said.
Maag and McPeek estimated the timeframe for the process to be two to four weeks.
“We do have countless videos in our system that have never been coded, so this is going to be a quick and cost-effective way for us to do that,” Maag said. “We’re really excited to see what the information will look like when we get it back.”
Orange Road railroad grade separation project
Commissioners also approved an amendment to a service agreement with Gannett Fleming Engineers and Architects pertaining to the upcoming Orange Road railroad separation project.
“This contract amendment involves the detailed design for the railroad bridge structures,” Delaware County Chief Deputy Engineer Rob Riley said.
“We have worked through with the railroads (Norfolk Southern) and set up parameters for those bridges.”
Gannett Fleming now has the information needed to complete the design on said structures.
“We are still on track for starting work in 2028. We do have some work to do, we have some additional properties needed to be acquired,” Riley said.
Other county commissioner updates:
Environmental Services:
- The commissioners approved crews installing internet services at the Tartan Fields Treatment Plant, removing a mobile hotspot.
County Engineer’s office:
- Addison Farms’ developer posted the necessary construction bond and inspection fees to widen Hills-Miller Road; commissioners unanimously approved this to move forward.
- Lewis Center Storage filed a petition for drainage maintenance and ditch maintenance assessment, which commissioners approved. This action places the drainage system on Delaware County’s maintenance program.
- Commissioners approved a Right of Way work permit summary sheet containing about 23 permits, according to Riley. A majority of the permits were for fiber-optic installation.
Commissioners also awarded a bid to Shelly Company for the Del-County 2026 Road Improvement Program.
“Each year, we bid out a pretty sizable program for resurfacing and applying different preservation treatments to our roads,” Riley said.
“We join together with our townships and bid out this contract both for the county roads and then our townships join in. Each township holds its individual contract that shares the same prices.
“So altogether, this is over a $10 million contract. Our county portion of this is about $3.9 million.”
Riley estimated this project will touch up almost 25% of the county’s roads.
