by JONATHAN YORK
A red fire hydrant can save a house from burning to a shell.
A black fire hydrant? Maybe not.
When residents of Amberwood and Indian Paintbrush packed into a public hearing before Kyle City Council, they were angry at Monarch, the company that provides their water service. But they also were afraid. One man told the council that all the hydrants in his neighborhood had been painted black.
A black hydrant, he said, is a signal to the fire department. “It means it is insufficient water pressure to put out a house fire,” he said.
Whether people were listening to him or had already been talking about this, the subject of black hydrants came up again and again through the public hearing. Many people expressed a fear that Monarch had given up on maintaining the hydrants. Their houses were just waiting to burn.
But that’s not necessarily true, the assistant city manager, James Earp, told the crowd. The law allows rural water companies to paint hydrants black, he said, to protect them from some liability. After all, it’s expensive and risky to set up a water supply. The black paint does not mean that the hydrants have been proven not to work.
“We all agree that law was not meant for subdivisions in urbanized areas,” Earp said – that is, Amberwood and Indian Paintbrush. “It was meant for rural areas.” He pointed out that Amberwood and Indian Paintbrush were built to city codes. “To give the people in the audience some relief, those fire hydrants were designed to provide fire flow,” he said.
All the same, he added, “now that they’ve been able to paint them black, who’s to say that they’ve maintained the same pressure.”
Jim Boyle is the attorney for the coalition of cities (now including Kyle) that is opposing Monarch’s bid to take over a group of small water systems. Boyle said the black hydrants should be “a key component” in an argument that Monarch is not meeting legal standards for service quality.
“They ought to provide fire hydrants that can fight fires,” Boyle said.
Asked about the public hearing, a Monarch spokeswoman declined to say anything beyond the statement that she previously made: that Monarch has invested almost $70 million over five years to tap new sources and replace aging plants. “Our sizeable investment across the state means our costs are significantly higher and can no longer be sustained by the current rates,” she wrote in an email.
Near the end of the public hearing one woman had a question for Mayor Lucy Johnson.
“Is there anybody from Monarch here?” she asked. “Is there any representative from Monarch here?”
Laughter spread through the crowd.
“I’m not aware of anybody,” Johnson said.
“Really?” the woman replied. “Don’t you think that’s disturbing?”
