They are so common that we rarely pay attention to them — unless they are smack where we wanted to park. Or our male dog won’t budge from them without sniffing every inch.
“They” are fire hydrants.
The City of Lebanon Authority owns and maintains 1,960 fire hydrants in its service area. Each is color-coded for firefighters: yellow means in-service; black, the end of the water main; purple, out-of-service; and red, privately owned.
“There’s no standard for color coding hydrants — this is our system,” said Brian DiScuillo, COLA water distribution manager. “Most of our hydrants are silver with yellow domes for the top and yellow outlet caps for the sides.”
Every year, COLA invoices municipalities a per-hydrant fee. This year’s fee of $238 is the same as 2023’s, said Tom Deitzler, COLA deputy director, in an email.
That fee is calculated on costs related to maintaining the hydrants as well as prorated costs for the water supply, water treatment, pumps and tanks to provide fire flows which are at higher pressure than domestic water usage, said Jon Beers, COLA executive directive, in an email.
For Cleona Borough with 65 hydrants, that means a bill of $15,470. North Cornwall will pay $69,098.54 — $69,020 for the 290 hydrants in the township and $78.33 for the hydrant that it shares with the City of Lebanon and West Lebanon Township, according to figures provided by COLA at its September board meeting.
The City of Lebanon has 606 hydrants and two it shares with neighboring municipalities for a total invoice of $144,385.08.
While municipalities are billed by COLA, each municipality then determines how to bill property owners.
How many fire hydrants a municipality has depends upon the density of buildings, DiScuillo said. In the city, hydrants are at least every 500 feet and sometimes closer, while in rural areas, they are located no less than 800 feet apart, he added.
Firefighters have depended upon some form of fire hydrant to tap into water supplies since the 1800s. When and by whom hydrants were invented is uncertain, although it is widely believed that the original patent for a hydrant was — ironically — lost in a fire.
While the early hydrants were wooden, today’s are typically cast iron. Because the hydrant body weighs about 100 pounds, hydrants are designed to break off at the base and stay in one piece if hit by a vehicle.
“That way there is less injury to the people driving the car and less impact on the vehicle,” DiScuillo said.
Movies and TV shows have accustomed us to expect torrents of water when hydrants are hit as part of car chases. But that only happens in states with warmer climates where hydrants have full water pressure, DiScuillo said.
In Pennsylvania, the valve releasing water to the hydrant is below the frost line — or about 3.5 feet below the hydrant’s body. Only after the valve is opened does water fill the hydrant.
“Very seldom do we get water coming out of a hydrant if a vehicle hits it,” DiScuillo said.
COLA flushes hydrants once a year — typically in April — to clean out the pipes of any sediment or rust and ensure functionality. Recently, a crew with COLA’s water department installed a new hydrant near the intersection of SR 72 and Jonestown Road because of operational issues.
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