“Smart infrastructure begins when the invisible starts to speak. SmartCover gives the wastewater network a voice, turning buried uncertainty into foresight, protection, and intelligent action.” – MJ Martin
Canada’s Wastewater Challenge
Scott McIntyre (L) from Metercor Inc. and John Rice (R) from The Town of Lincoln installing a SmartCover wastewater system
For Canadian municipalities, wastewater collection is one of the least visible, yet most consequential, public services. Environment and Climate Change Canada identifies municipal wastewater as a significant source of pollution entering Canadian waters, while the federal Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations require applicable systems to monitor and report effluent performance and, where relevant, combined sewer overflows. In older communities, heavy rainfall and snowmelt can overload combined systems, making early warning and accurate information particularly valuable. (Canada)
What Is SmartCover?
SmartCover is a remote monitoring, communications, and analytics platform for wastewater collection systems. SmartCover Systems is a Badger Meter brand. Badger Meter acquired SmartCover on January 31, 2025, for $185 million, adding sewer-line and lift-station monitoring to its BlueEdge water-management portfolio. (Badger Meter) Effective January 1, 2026, the former Hadronex d/b/a SmartCover legal entity was consolidated into Badger Meter, Inc. (Badger Meter)
At its core, SmartCover acts like a nervous system beneath the street. Sensors installed at strategic locations continuously watch sewer levels and other conditions, while communications and cloud-based software transform those measurements into alarms, trends, and operational intelligence. SmartLevel provides continuous sewer-level monitoring, while other SmartCover technologies can measure hydrogen sulphide, estimate flow, monitor combined sewer overflows, detect intrusion, and support lift-station and stormwater applications. (SmartCover Systems)
Why Does It Matter?
Traditional sewer maintenance is frequently calendar-driven. Crews clean pipes, inspect manholes, and investigate problems according to schedules developed from experience. SmartCover introduces condition-based management. Instead of asking, “When did we last inspect this sewer?” operators can ask, “What is the sewer telling us right now?”
That distinction can be enormous. Rising levels may indicate a developing blockage. Changing wet-weather patterns can expose inflow and infiltration. Abnormal conditions can trigger notifications before sewage reaches the surface. Badger Meter states that these capabilities can help utilities prevent overflows, optimize cleaning, improve collection-system visibility, reduce operating costs, and protect public health and the environment. (Badger Meter)
Who and When?
SmartCover was founded in 2005 by Greg Quist, Ph.D., and David Drake, E.E., two water-industry professionals who recognized the need for reliable remote sewer-spill prevention. Their objective was straightforward but ambitious: give wastewater operators continuous visibility into infrastructure that traditionally remained invisible until somebody opened a manhole or a problem surfaced. (SmartCover Systems)
Customer comment: “the SmartCovers give us around the clock visibility into our systems which allows us to be proactive and react before they turn into issues that impact our residents”
Today, the technology is directed primarily toward municipal wastewater utilities, collection-system operators, engineers, public works departments, and organizations responsible for sewer and stormwater infrastructure.
Where Does SmartCover Work?
The technology is deployed where continuous visibility delivers the greatest value, including sewer manholes, lift stations, outfalls, stormwater infrastructure, utility vaults, open channels, holding tanks, and other remote assets. SmartLevel can combine ultrasonic and pressure sensing with battery power and satellite-based communications. This permits operation at difficult locations, without local electrical power, and can maintain communications when conventional cellular service is unavailable. (SmartCover Systems)
The Bigger Canadian Opportunity
For Canada, SmartCover represents considerably more than another sensor. It is part of the transformation from reactive wastewater maintenance toward predictive infrastructure management. A municipality can begin treating its collection network less like buried plumbing and more like an instrumented industrial process.
Questions to Ponder
The strategic questions are therefore important.
* Should Canadian utilities deploy SmartCover only at known overflow risks, or throughout entire sanitary collection systems?
* Could SmartCover information be integrated with rainfall data, SCADA, GIS, hydraulic models, and enterprise asset-management platforms?
* Most importantly, should the business case be measured only by avoided sewer spills, or should municipalities also quantify deferred capital investment, optimized cleaning, fewer truck rolls, improved regulatory reporting, and better environmental stewardship?
Perhaps the most important question is this:
* if a municipality has the technology to know that a sewer problem is developing before it becomes an emergency, at what point does continuous monitoring stop being optional and become part of responsible infrastructure management?
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.