Town of Danville Activates Real-Time Ultrasonic Creek Stage Gauges Along San Ramon Creek Bridges

Town of Danville Engineering and Maintenance Services staff and emergency preparedness coordinators activated a network of five solar-powered ultrasonic creek-stage radar gauges on Friday afternoon along San Ramon Creek and Green Valley Creek ahead of the 2026–2027 winter rainy season. Mounted beneath bridge parapets at Hartz Avenue, Diablo Road, El Cerro Boulevard, La Gonda Way, and Sycamore Valley Road, the non-contact radar transceivers measure distance to the water surface every sixty seconds with two-millimeter accuracy. Because the sensors sit above the high-water mark rather than inside the creek bed, floating winter storm branches and gravel sediment cannot foul the instrumentation.

Each bridge unit transmits real-time stage elevations and rate-of-rise calculations over dual cellular and LoRaWAN municipal radio links to the Town of Danville Emergency Operations Center at 500 La Gonda Way and the Contra Costa County Flood Control District hydro-meteorological network. Whenever upstream rainfall in the Las Trampas or Mount Diablo watersheds pushes creek levels within thirty-six inches of top-of-bank thresholds, automated SMS and email alerts notify public works standby crews to inspect trash racks and deploy road-closure barricades early.

For the first time this winter, the town has also embedded live creek-level hydrographs and a color-coded three-tier status indicator (Normal, Advisory, and High-Flow Watch) directly onto its public storm preparedness webpage, allowing creekside homeowners along Brookside Drive, Front Street, and Danville Oak Place to monitor storm peaks from their smartphones. Complementary tipping-bucket rain gauges at Oak Hill Park and the Town Maintenance Services Yard provide localized fifteen-minute precipitation totals.

The $92,000 sensor network was funded through Danville's Clean Water Program Storm Drain Reserve alongside a hazard-mitigation technology grant. Residents can view live creek stage graphs, check self-serve sandbag filling station hours at the 1000 Sherburne Hills Road maintenance yard, and register for Community Warning System alerts on the Town of Danville Emergency Preparedness Portal.