Confusion over who is responsible for the upkeep of private fire hydrants in the District has spurred emergency D.C. Council legislation barring permits for new hydrants unless someone first stakes claim for their care.
At-large Councilman Phil Mendelson’s emergency resolution would prohibit new hydrants on private property without a signed document stating who is responsible for maintaining them, now and in the future.
“There should be no more of these permits that allow a private hydrant where 20 years in the future, it will be unclear who’s responsible for that hydrant,” Mendelson said Monday.
The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority maintains, repairs and replaces the city’s 9,037 public hydrants. The D.C. fire department inspects every hydrant in the city twice a year, but the agency is not responsible for the 1,300-plus on private property, like a college campus or a gated community, Chief Dennis Rubin told the D.C. Council last week.
Roughly 15 percent of all private hydrants were out of service as of two weeks ago, according to D.C. WASA, compared with less than 1 percent of public hydrants.
“We have no responsibility to determine which hydrants are public, which hydrants are private or how they’re maintained,” Rubin said.
According to D.C. WASA’s Web site: “Individual property owners are responsible for private hydrants on their property.”
That includes the Department of Mental Health, which must maintain the hydrants on the massive St. Elizabeths campus in Southeast because it is considered private property. But for homeowners, the issue is more complicated.
On Klingle Ridge overlooking Klingle Road and Porter Street NW are six wooden houses surrounded by trees and, residents say, a single nearby fire hydrant on private property. The hydrant, said resident John Campbell, is recessed into the ground and so old that fire department hoses won’t connect to it. The homes, he said, “could go like a tinderbox.”
None of the Klingle Ridge residents are original homeowners, Campbell said, and there are no covenants that maintain who is responsible for the hydrant, which went out of service in July 2008 and still requires work. Campbell said he is backing Mendelson’s bill.
“That’s would they should have had, something that shows who’s responsible for maintaining it,” Campbell said. “What we also think is they should grandfather hydrants like ours and make it public.”
