More D.C. Hydrants May Be Broken
Fire Chief Raises Estimate to 25%

By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 24, 2007

D.C. Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin said yesterday that at least 25 percent of the city's 9,000 fire hydrants could require replacement or immediate repairs.

Testifying before a D.C. Council committee, Rubin gave a bleaker picture than that provided last week by the city's fire union, which estimated that 10 percent of the hydrants don't work. Rubin said that those hydrants must be replaced and that an additional 15 percent are in such bad shape they must be fixed immediately.

"It's like a sucker punch when firefighters are fighting a fire and go to a hydrant that doesn't work," Rubin said.

The broken hydrants are a safety hazard and an embarrassment, said Rubin, who took office last month after leading fire departments in Atlanta and other cities. Although firefighters typically can draw water from other nearby hydrants during a blaze, they have said that time is wasted trying to figure out which ones work, as was the case in a recent fire at the Georgetown public library.

Rubin said the conditions vary from street to street -- in some neighborhoods, he said, up to 16 percent of the hydrants are broken, and many more need repairs because of poor water flow and other problems.

The chief's testimony had a much more urgent tone than that provided by the head of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, the quasi-independent agency charged with maintaining the hydrants.

WASA General Manager Jerry N. Johnson stuck to his contention that only a fraction of hydrants are out of service, saying that WASA knew of only 29 as of Monday.

The dueling views came at a hearing of the council's public safety and judiciary committee, in which lawmakers quizzed officials from the fire department and WASA about faulty hydrants.

"I think this whole thing is disturbing," said council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), head of the committee. "It feels like catch-up. Neither agency has been as aggressive as they should."

Because firefighters are the primary users of the hydrants, they initiated systematic testing of them in 2005 and started working with WASA on the process. They began a new round of inspections this month.

Rubin based his estimates on fire department inspections. One round of recent tests, for example, found that 23 of 256 hydrants weren't working in neighborhoods across the District.

The department has tested about 1,300 hydrants and plans to inspect all of them by the end of the year, officials said. WASA predicted that the tests will be done by Labor Day, saying that the agency is devoting more staff to the testing.

In recent months, firefighters have found high numbers of broken hydrants in some neighborhoods. Some yield no water. Others work but have leaks, low water flow or structural damage from car accidents and other mishaps -- these are given "high priority" for repair.

In the area north of Shaw, for example, 16 percent were out and 12 percent needed immediate repair. In the Capitol Hill area, 15 percent were not working and 18 percent needed urgent attention, fire department records show.

Some neighborhoods were not so hard hit. In Cleveland Park, 7 percent were out of service and 10 percent required quick repairs.

Many of the broken and high-priority hydrants have been fixed by WASA.

The issue came to the forefront April 30 when firefighters were unable to draw water from the two hydrants closest to a three-alarm fire at the Georgetown public library. They wound up using hydrants about two blocks away. In that case, the trouble did not seriously hamper the fire department's response, officials said.

At the hearing yesterday, officials couldn't get a definitive answer on the number of hydrants in the city. Fire department and WASA officials said they think there are about 9,000, but they said they are still counting, identifying and cataloging them.

Mendelson said he was surprised to learn that the city government doesn't have a complete hydrant inventory. "It's clear, when you get down to it, they don't know what's going on," Mendelson said of the fire department and WASA.

WASA is spending $26.5 million to fix and upgrade hydrants -- a sign, Johnson said, that the agency is working on the issue.

"We've got to start somewhere to get our arms around this problem," he said.

The controversy puts Johnson back on the hot seat with D.C. officials. Johnson was WASA's head when concerns emerged three years ago about high lead levels in D.C. drinking water. The agency was criticized for not quickly alerting the public; it later agreed to replace all lead pipes in the city.

Mendelson was indignant about some of WASA's broken hydrants. To illustrate his point, he held up color photographs that showed hydrants swallowed by tree roots, hidden in weeds and tilted on their sides. He asked Johnson why such conditions exist, saying that in the case of the tree root, it took many years to grow.

Johnson said he did not have an answer, then added: "I would have expected a resident to call it in."

Fire officials said that hydrant, in the Tenleytown area, was reported to WASA about six months ago and was recently replaced.

Questions also emerged about an additional 3,000 hydrants that are within city limits but are on federal or private property, such as universities or parkland. The fire department said it uses those hydrants to fight fires, but WASA says it is not responsible for counting or maintaining them.

Mendelson said he is not sure that the federal government and private property owners are aware they need to maintain their hydrants and said he would consider amending city law to include them under WASA's jurisdiction.