`
Placeholder image

Aqua Sierra Controls History

Company History

How Aqua Sierra Has Grown

From the start in 1979, we have continued to grow based on word of mouth from the exceptional quality and customer orientation we have given to our wonderful customers. Relying on Les Watson, our founder and his team's outstanding ability and expertise to solve complicated technical issues, Les has created a growth company that has serviced the Northern California Industrial Market for over four decades. The company has grown in areas such as Legionella Control Systems, complex pumping systems and flow measurement, working with customers over the years such as: Stanford Medical, San Francisco Medical, San Francisco Water, California Water Service Co., Cal Trans and many others. ASC, since aquiring its "A" Construction License and "C-10" Electrical License has expanded its systems ingtegration capability for design and construction.


Les A. Watson, President and Applications Engineer, The Backbone of ACS

Mr. Watson founded this company in October of 1979. His duties include financial management, applications engineering, consulting with customers and sales. Mr. Watson, is a competent and certified journeyman instrument technician and is the RME and qualifier for the Contractors license A and C-10. He also serves as the primary technical advisor. Mr. Watson's technical responsibilities include customer consulting for new projects, new project applications engineering, custom control panel and PLC system design, design review, and supervision of technical engineering staff for systems developed by Aqua Sierra Controls. For the past 30 years Mr. Watson has been responsible for the fabrication and installation of thousands of control systems throughout California. Some of these projects are discussed on the following pages. Almost all of our projects required that we provide new custom PLC and or motor control panels and SCADA panels for the process that we designed and installed.

Prior to this, Mr. Watson was employed by BIF, a division of General Signal Corporation. BIF was a manufacturer of instrumentation and process treatment equipment used in the public water and wastewater industry. Their products included such items as Venturi tubes and DIP transmitters for flow measurement, electrically and pneumatically actuated butterfly valves and a variety of other process instrumentation.

Mr. Watson's position while at BIF was to provide service as the West Coast Field Service Manager for the Los Angeles and Bay Area service offices. He was also assigned as one of four company technical troubleshooters and assigned the 11 western states and associated foreign countries to solve problems with products or the application of the products. Mr. Watson's duties as a troubleshooter included customer technical assistance on troublesome projects including travel to the site to assess, recommend and or make repairs. During his employment at BIF, Mr. Watson obtained factory management training techniques. Technical training all on all products manufactured by BIF including package treatment systems for water quality treatment, disinfection chemical feed equipment and control, process control instrumentation and SCADA telemetry systems. Mr. Watson, while with the company, worked with Los Angeles County Sanitation to develop the standards required by the district to develop a new area of expertise for BIF for industrial water and process wastewater calibration. These procedures are currently being utilized in our services here at Aqua Sierra.

Prior to employment with BIF, Mr. Watson was employed at the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. After his entry training requirements had been met, he was assigned to the instrument shop at Haynes Steam Electric Generating Plant, Seal Beach, CA. His duties included repair, installation, maintenance and calibration of all process control instrumentation systems used in the power plant including but not limited to flowmeter systems, boiler controls, boiler water chemical feed systems, boiler burner controls, feed water controls and all steam related and associated equipment for power generation. He achieved a journeyman instrument technician certificate after completing the four-year apprentice training required. This training included basic and advanced electrical, electronics to component level and basic and advanced instrumentation, boiler water chemistry and hydraulic distribution piping. Other non-required courses provided by the City and completed by Mr. Watson were: closed circuit television repair for boiler burner monitoring systems, Bermad and Cla-Val hydraulic valve repair, Wallace & Tiernan chlorine equipment and control using Allen Bradley PLCs. All courses included certifications of completion.

Additional Training and Accreditations:
  • University of Southern California for hydraulic piping design and back-flow prevention
  • American Water Works for back-flow systems and testing
  • Sierra College for water technology
  • Mission College for water technology, one semester
  • Contractors License School
  • US Navy steam propulsion machinery and repair
  • Affiliations: AWWA, CWEA, ISA of America, Contractors Assoc., Chamber of Commerce

  • Mr. Watson is a Joint Patent Designer and owns the company, Industrial Control Systems, that holds the patent for the Chem Runner Control System. The patent offers a new high speed control strategy that provides a fast and accurate control response resulting in long term operating cost for chemicals used for chlorination/de-chlorination and pH neutralization systems for water and wastewater. Our patent number: US 6,346,198 Bl Feb 12, 2002
  • Mr. Watson served in the U.S. Navy as a Machinist Mate aboard the US Constellation CVA-64 an aircraft carrier from 1963 to 1967. He was honorably discharged, is a Vietnam Veteran and is a current member of VFD Post 1534 in Southern California.

Contractors License # 474023 A Engineering and C-10 Electrical.