The City of Milpitas receives water under contract from the San Francisco Water Department. The contract states that SFWD's capacity to meet peak day demands cannot be guaranteed. New pumping stations were planned to help meet the peaking requirements. To control the updated water distribution system, a master supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system was conceived. Since the city's requirement is to have the SCADA system implemented in stages, different types of SCADA systems were evaluated. A programmable logic controller (PLC) based system was selected using price and performance criteria. The first of these pumping stations and its PLC control system are reviewed in this article. The ability of the PLC to implement complicated control strategies and the flexibility to accommodate the requirements for both before and after SCADA made the PLC the most logical choice.