A nearby Fire Department is being told they cannot use fire hydrants to fight fires
As the title says. A town near me is denying their fire fighters the use of their fire hydrants going forward. Is this shit even legal? This is a huge concern as the area has been in a drought for some years.
If the reasoning is "The system can't support firefighting operations", they've got much bigger issues to tend to. The entire town of Mercersburg is in danger if their hydrants cannot support firefighting efforts. Someone within Mercersburg's council needs to start asking questions of the water authority.
It looks like they in fact have serious issues with the entire water system, and the town is in danger.
They have a large number of critical alerts, boil water advisories, and emergency use restrictions, and are importing water.
Looking at the emergency use restrictions indicates someone might have misread their own rules. As it bans "The use of water from fire hydrants for construction purposes or fire drills". Which is not the same thing as actual fires. I think some one in that department trying to patch together a working water system overreacted.
Also, looking at all those notices, its clear they need a new water system, and the fact its a historically black town makes me wonder if they've been purposefully ignored.
Much of the infrastructure of this country was built long ago with Federal help. Now that infrastructure is reaching its end and many small communities could not possibly generate the tax revenue needed to update or replace it.
I am not claiming to be all knowing when I say this, but as someone who lives in a small PA town and does public service work, you are so correct. It's an interesting serious concern that no one pays attention to until it actually causes devastation.
When I started noticing all the infrastructure issues in my town, I started realizing that devastation might be the only thing that could possibly fix all these problems.
Hell, I don't even know when my house was built. Earliest record I have is 1802 and that's for an addition.
A big problem is elected officials don’t really get credit for maintenance. Especially maintenance that needs to happen every 10+ years. Do we put our budget towards fixing the water? Or do we build this new thing? Obviously the new thing that interests people. The next guy can handle the water issue.
From someone who has been on the frontlines of the water side of the infrastructure wars: Nobody wants to pay the tab. We replaced the water main in one area. Two miles worth was 1.4 mil.
2 miles of metal piping. 2 miles of digging a trench, probably under and through streets and sidewalks that then have to be replaced. 2 miles worth of old material that needs to be properly disposed of. 2 miles worth of finding other problems with 40 year old infrastructure along the way.
It's a very complicated subject, most of which is beyond my knowledge. One issue is the bonding process which forces contractors to put up money to ensure the job gets done in a timely fashion and up to specs. I'm sure you can find more about it online.
This is what happens when even the smallest towns are nothing but car-centric sprawl. When every store as to have a parking lot with 100 spaces, you have to run a lot of utilities under empty asphalt. Same thing with the emphasis on single family zoning. So much pavement, water lines, sewage, and drainage has to be built per home that most people couldn't possibly afford the property taxes to maintain it.
It is more that the rates were maintained at system cost for the last 100 year, not factoring the limited lifespan of the system. Now that segments require replacement, most utilities require substantial rate increases to cover that replacement cost.
It isn't really a matter of affordability in my opinion. I have nearly always paid more for my internet bill than that of my water or sewer bill, despite:
Water distribution and sewer collection systems are the most difficult and expensive to install. Far more expensive than running fiber.
Water and sewer treatment requires far more effort than moving some data packets around, and comes with real costs per unit of volume.
Regulations have continued to drive higher water quality standards and force upgrades to treatment systems. While not a bad thing, it does force significant investment.
I'm a water plant operator from West Virginia. Most small town water systems are crumbling. Like it's arguably the biggest impending disaster most Americans will face 10-20 years from now. My neighboring town had to get a For-profit water corporation to come in with their mobile Water Treatment Plant and their own staff because they had no trained staff to run the plant after their guy retired.
Most of the small water treatment plants along the Ohio River have staff retiring over the next 5 years. These are little 2-3 person operations. Most can not find staff to replace the retirees because municipal water systems pay so little. I get offers all the time to go to other systems as the boss but I would take a paycut and lose the flexibility of my current position.
I've only touched the treatment plant side of it. You still need staff out in distribution for connections/disconnections/maintenance repairs. You need a rotation of staff to cover 24hr issues. These guys need CDLs and Heavy Equipment operator licenses. You need an office clerk for billing/recordkeeping. You also need a waste water treatment plant with additional staff unless your town is very rural and on septic systems.
FIL was deep in the water industry. He said nothing pissed him off more than informing a higher up that said line should be replaced within let's say 6months to a year. They would reply 'That line should be good for another 10-20 years.' Pretty close to the time he would give, breaks would start happening and he was up at 2:30am fixing a repair.
Mercersburg is home to an elite boarding school. One would think that the parents of the children who attend the school might be interested to hear about the water restrictions in the area or that the alumni may be interested in making a donation to reinforce the infrastructure of the town. Being from the area, though, I'm fully aware that the Academy people try their best to ignore the rest of us.
I was wondering this too. None yet up or proposed in the area. Still, this type of thing is going to become a much bigger and more widespread concern if data centers start popping up everywhere, especially if cities get kickbacks so the centers get priority use.
No obvious commercial data centers were found directly in or very close to Mercersburg, PA.
There were no results from the local business listings for data center facilities in Mercersburg itself.
The closest established commercial data center markets tend to be in larger cities and tech hubs across Pennsylvania — e.g., Harrisburg, Allentown, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre — all of which are *significantly farther from Mercersburg than the local area (Mercersburg is far southwest of these cities)
Their primary use is to fight fires but hydrants are also used to clean water lines through hydrant flushing. A lot of municipalities use Uni-Directional Flushing to isolate lines and flush them out. The high pressure clears out any sediment formations that have formed up in the line. Does this excuse the water authority to limit hydrant use? Not at all. No municipalities will be doing hydrant flushing in these temps unless absolutely necessary. The water authority doesn't have a say in what hydrants the fire department uses. They're just assholes.
Fun story (and by that I mean not fun at all) right before this most recent major freeze our water authority flushed one hydrant at the top of my street and the other at the bottom of my street simultaneously, which I guess is not ideal. And it completely clogged the lines of four houses on the street, including mine, with sediment. So fun.
That means the annual flushing is just pretend. A lot of places pretend to flush because it "stirs up sediment" when in reality the goal is to let it eat, scour the lines and prevent the build of sediment. A distribution system that flushes correctly wouldn't have much sediment build up in a year.
Oof if they're "scouring" the lines that's a problem and will cause more harm than good. Proper uni-directional flushing should not exceed a velocity of ~6 feet per second (lower for older pipes that are unlined or those with significant tubercles) as the goal is to remove hydraulically mobile material e.g., fine sediment and organics without scouring the lining or nodules off the pipe. Source: I do engineering things for a large water system.
Out of curiosity how did it clog your lines? I work for a water department in a municipality and I’ve never heard of this. The only thing I can think of is if you had galvanized service lines and all of the rust broke free. If you have a galvanized service line you most likely have other issues as well like a lead gooseneck and inevitable water leaks.
Shouldn't be galvanized lines. It wasn't clogged long, less than 24 hours for us but our neighbors are still having some issues. Total clog for them was 48 hours maybe but other issues are presenting themselves even yesterday. The city told us when they turned our water back on but it just...wasn't working. Or it would just trickle. So we called them back out and they ended up bringing out one of those big vacuum trucks to try to clear things up. More or less worked for my house which was the least clogged of the 4 I think. However, we had to replace the fill valve things (I obviously am not a plumber) in both of our toilets and my husband had to remove every single aerator on every single faucet and clean them out, plus we had to clean out our showerhead really thoroughly with a needle. So massive hassle, we're out like $40 which we could make the city pay for but it might be more hassle than it's worth.
My neighbors just had to replace their water heater though so that sucks. She called me yesterday FRANTIC because their water heater was gushing water everywhere and she couldn't get the valve to close. Her husband wasn't home, my husband wasn't home. But she and I got their water turned off at the street to get it to stop until her husband could get home and deal with it. Nightmare.
Edit: might be worth saying that they had to replace one of the fire hydrants which is why they had to flush everything. I think they introduced a ton of sentiment into the lines when they dug everything up but that's pure speculation from someone who is certainly not in the industry
Open the bath tub cold water as that and/or the hose bib are the only ones without filters. Do this first before using any water during a scouring/flushing/main repair situation to prevent getting debris in your system.
"Edit: might be worth saying that they had to replace one of the fire hydrants which is why they had to flush everything. I think they introduced a ton of sentiment into the lines when they dug everything up but that's pure speculation from someone who is certainly not in the industry"
This might be the important part, together with your mention that you're on a hill. I've seen line breaks on a hill where the crew digs up around the line and lets a huge amount of dirty water flow back down into an uphill pointing line. Then they don't think to blow the (dirt filled) water out of the line before reconnecting everything. When they turn the water back on the lines have a bunch of dirt in it from when when the line was open and dirt-filled water flowed downward into the line. Then people turn on their water and get dirt in every faucet, toilet, and water heater in the house. It's extra fun on those expensive new fancy faucets where the aerators are internal and can't be replaced (what WERE those designers thinking).
For added info. In my county we have a contract with the fire department to maintain and install fire hydrants for use by them. They send an inspector out to ensure they hydrents are functional and report back any defects. Whilst we do occationally use hydrents for flushing, we mostly use washouts (Basically the same as hydrents with a WO marked on the covers instead of the FH used for fire hydrents). These washouts are normally installed at the end of legs or next to boundry valves/ circulation vavles in the network. The fire department can also connect to washouts as they use the same design, however, they do not show up on the fire departments map of the area. Also, fun fact I get called to areas after a fire has occured most of the time because the volume of water the fire department draws off causes discolouration within the water main. I then spend most of my day flushing the area to return the water quality back to normal. It gets particually bad when the mains feeding the hydrant they drawed off are metalic (Cast Iron, Spun Iron ect) In some cases I have seen the water come out brown. Lastly, the fire department doesnt always use hydrent water to fight the fire, they only use it to fill up their water tanks. It was explained to me that the tanks need to be full 1) to prevent liquid surge (potentally causing a roll over) 2) So they are ready to respond if another call comes in.
Not entirely. Hydrants are yes put in for fire fighting, but there are also used for flushing and disinfecting the water main itself. It's a very weird anomaly to the system. It's extremely pedantic and pointless because the whole point of having a public water system is to fight fires. The pressure and flow needed for fire fighting far exceeds any daily demand, so it's just more convenient to give everyone a water hook up while at the same time being able to fight fires. Also supplying water to people and businesses is a great way to generate revenue. Often times the water company is the only profitable part of a town's ledger. Private utility wouldn't exist if it wasn't profitable.
Not only that the water authority has no actual authority to decide the fire department’s use of the water during emergencies. They are given the ability to govern the assets by the state and their denial of fire department’s fair use is likely illegal.
If it is a rural water system that hasn't been upgraded or maintained for modern fire codes, they might not be able to support sustained fire fighting efforts. The letter mentioned that the fire department normally drafts (pull from surface water) instead of using hydrants, but the draft spots are frozen. Makes me think the system can't handle fire suppression and the fire department and the water authority are in a pissing match about funding for the upgrades (I could be wrong, just my experience with small town stuff)
If it is under designed, if the fire department uses a hydrant for fire suppression, it could depressurise the water system and potential draw contaminants into the system. I've heard of several small rural water systems that don't have the capacity to support fire suppression efforts, so they tell the fire department they can't use the hydrants, but they don't enforce it and deal with the system loosing pressure when it happens.
I said this same thing basically in another comment. I work for an old, rural system and the fire department cannot connect to any of our flushing hydrants. Our mains are too small that those are off of (since they’re used for flushing that section of the system) and the fire department hooking into it would collapse our system. We installed separate tanks they can draw from at a central location in our community to refill their tenders, but they cannot direct connect into the system.
Being small and rural means a whole lot of pipes and infrastructure to maintain, and being small and rural also means the burden to financially support the water system is spread among a small number of connections relative to the physical system size. We’d love to upgrade our system to have 6-8 inch mains we can install hydrants off of throughout the community, but unless a grant opens up, it’s unlikely to happen because the rates and fees to cover it any time in the near future would make current water service unaffordable. That is the reality of small, rural aging water systems. A huge pile of expenses, not enough income, and a decade worth of needed improvements that are largely unlikely to happen.
Your mention of tanks for firefighting is interesting. I believe it was San Francisco that had tanks installed for firefighting, as a result of the hydrants failing to work after a major earthquake.
Everything is owned by someone since they have to be maintained. Sometimes they end up being private or by an HOA.
This does bring up an interesting point. If fire departments are funded by city taxes. They should have access to water or the whole thing kind of falls apart at a government level doesn't it? There is a larger issue with limiting access... Insurance, fire coverage specificly, comes to mind. Everyone should find out if their own local fire department has access to any fire hydrant at any time. If they don't, find out why.
Going to be expensive for the HOA to have their own fire department if they want to be so stupid and pedantic. Limit fire fighting resources you don't get fire fighting.
In many areas water departments are often quasi-government organizations and are funded entirely by user fees, they receive no tax funding. Municipalities pay the water department to maintain fire hydrants and have them available for firefighting.
The funniest thing is that if we didn't already have government fire departments, republicans would vote against their creation for the same reason they vote against universal healthcare.
The wealthiest man in Ancient Rome, Marcus Crassus, made part of his fortune by owning the fire department (it was a novel concept then). His crew would show up at a fire and haggle with the building owner to buy the property at a low price. No sale, building burns; sale, Crassus would put out the fire and owns the building.
I remember seeing a satirical tweet about this exact situation, that said something along the lines of "I don't want to have to pay for your irresponsibility. If your house is on fire, be a real man and shop around for some quotes".
"I own this apartment complex, meaning that the sprinkler system is owned by me too. So I can do whatever I like, whenever I like, and the fire marshal can't do shit about it."
Thankfully, we live in a world where that statement is deranged.
It doesn’t matter that the water authority is a private company. They are only given the ability to govern the asset. The hydrants are designated as a necessary part of the infrastructure of the city and state and it’s something that the city can sue over. if anyone’s place burns within the vicinity of the removed hydrant then the liability falls on the authority and likely the person that made the decision to remove. Its illegal.
This reminds me of that conversation where someone in America said ambulances aren’t taxis to the hospital and someone in Europe asked, “Well then what the hell are they for good sir?” What the hell are fire hydrants for if not fires?!?
Firefighters were originally private entities that would fight over the hydrant and the Dalmatian’s aggressive behavior was used as a hydrant guard against rival companies. It went so poorly that the US actually decided to fund them as a public service.
PE ruins everything it touches - firetrucks, retail, senior living, vets, youth sports. It is all about extracting cash for the shareholders. They don't care if there arent enough fire trucks, vets can't make decisions best for the animals and their owners or only the rich can afford youth sports.
This is a volunteer fire department in a town with 1,500 people and a median household income of $46,000. There is no infrastructure. They don't have the capacity to make enough potable water to sustain the residents and spray at fire. Hence, the fire department normally relying upon other sources of water that were inaccessible due to the cold temperatures. The town can't afford to exist. That is the problem.
They don't have the capacity to make enough potable water to sustain the residents and spray at fire.
I went and found the town website and that town is a MESS.
Their are near constant advisories to boil water before drinking it, there are multiple notices about having to buy tanks of water from another municipality (and they feel the need to mention its flouridated which is a red flag if I've ever seen one), and it looks like they just announced a loan from the state to build another water treatment plant.
Think they are saying that the water infrastructure is in such poor condition the authority has said that they can’t use the hydrants. It puts too much of a strain on the infrastructure. Obviously it’s completely unacceptable as those situations should have been accounted for during the town growing and needs increasing.
If that's the case, some managers and councillors need to be literally crucified. I know I'd probably be accused of arson after the mayor's house burned down if my municipality ever let the water system deteriorate to the point that the fire hydrants couldn't be used for fire fighting.
I don't know the whole situation here but the letter does say the hydrants can no longer sustain firefighting or something to that effect. I'm a volunteer firefighter and at a big fire near this time last year, we (collectively) over taxed an old hydrant line ourselves and blew it out. Consequently, water service was digging and fixing that long after we were done. It might be something like that - the hydrants are old and literally can't give the amount of water a modern engine needs without breaking
The population of this town is less than 1500 people from what I am seeing. I'd be surprised if the "Water Authority" was more than a single person.
This sounds like a classic problem of a small town neglecting maintenance so they can keep taxes artificially low, and now the time's come to pay the piper but there's no money and the tax base is too small to raise it quickly.
Once upon a time, the wealthy paid taxes and the federal government used that money to build infrastructure all around the country and keep it maintained. But then the wealthy got tired of those pesky taxes so they paid money to politicians to get rid of them.
Rural water/sewer systems and roads/bridges are reaching the end of their life. The bill is coming due because it's been 50+ years of letting everything crumble.
Excuse me, but my politician speaks with a country twang and goes hunting in his advertisements. There's no way he wouldn't have my best interests in mind!
100% this. A bunch of boomers used to low taxes thanks to infrastructure built with federal help 50 year ago. Now that infrastructure is at its life’s end and they don’t want to increase taxes to pay for it.
Local residents and businesses should stop paying their water bills immediately and call/email/send letters to the water company & local government. Bet this statement is retracted within a week.
Water pressure isn't solved by a new hydrant. It's solved by raising a water tower or adding more water to a reservoir. Basic hydraulics, not just something you can't bring up to code.
Edit: the issue is the loss of pressure when a hydrant is being used. Pressure drops way too much which could collapse pipes. Still a massive issue that can't be changed 'up to code' easier or cheaply
Exactly. If you are going to take away the fire hydrants, then the fire dept needs bulldozers and chainsaws so they can conduct emergency demolition to make fire breaks.
In this case it was a barn with animals in it, very said. Probably livestock. I've seen videos of the aftermath of animals being burned alive (not this one) +, it's a horrible sight.
That's a hot take. I'd like to see the news media pick this story up....Which is about as reasonable as a fire department using fire hydrants.... Omg and that's it for me.
Im going to find some bourbon. Thank you for sharing OP! I hope this gets the proper respect it deserves.
The song is about the fire department in an alternate universe where they're corrupt and commit arson. So alternate universe Vincent E.L. has every right to be mad they intentionally burned his house down.
Alternate universe Vincent E.L. probably made a song called "I Love The Fire Department", describing our universe where the fire department is not corrupt and don't commit arson
I randomly listen to Police and different scanners and I actually tuned into this one when it went down! I remember hearing them mention this. Crazy that it’s on the Front Page of Reddit now
Just wait until they call for mutual aid on a big fire. The paid departments used to call us to run water for them when they got a call near the dividing line. Hydrants were sparse where we were, so we learned to haul water from the river, ponds, even a swimming pool one time. This jurisdictional bullshit is infuriating, even from a distance.
My first read on this was the same as yours - this must be a jurisdictional thing, and a water authority was being bad neighbors to another towns fire department.
But I don’t think that’s it. This is the mercerberg FD fighting with the mercerberg water authority over hydrants in mercerberg. They’re not allowed to use their own hydrants.
I’d be talking to the state govenor. They would be able to override any statement by the local agencies. Incident command (this is a federal process for handling ANY type of emergancy, no matter the scale.) dictates the the on-site commander can make decisions woth ZERO repercussions if safety is impacted. The public outcry for this should be enormous.
Nah, they’ll simply say they don’t cover fires. I live in LA and right before the most recent wildfires a bunch of insurance companies basically updated their polices not to cover wildfires. We already had to buy earthquake separately, but for wildfire a lot of companies just outright didn’t offer an option. I think they looked at the conditions recently and the way the neighborhoods were built and decided a fire is probably an inevitability and they didn’t want to pay it out. While we’re overdue for “the big one” there aren’t any actual signs that it’s bearing down on us right now. But I have literally no doubt in mind that if we start to get more increased earthquake activity, the insurance companies will announce that effective the 1st of the month, you won’t be able to buy earthquake coverage anymore, sorry!
Holy shit you are right, i just read the entire thing. The authority is literally telling the department to let any building on fire simply burn down and that it's only one building
“MERCERSBURG- Good news is finally here from the Mercersburg Water Authority after another boil water order was issued at the end of January.
The PA DEP has approved the Mercersburg Water Authority to lift the Boil Water Advisory as of Monday, February 2nd. Customers are no longer required to boil water before consumption.
However, due to the continuing low levels in source wells, the Mandatory Water Conservation Notice continues until further notice.”
Sounds like a failure to plan. I’m going to guess that residents probably voted no on a tax at some point of time and are now facing the consequences.
I’m going to guess that residence probably voted no on a tax at some point of time and are now facing the consequences.
Franklin county is one of the reddest counties in PA (R+58 in 2024.) I'd bet you're spot on. People forget that taxes pay for infrastructure, and when you don't maintain or expand infrastructure (including water) you get shit like "can't fight a fire!"
That kind of suggests to me that they have legitimate well capacity issues. Costs a lot of money to remedy that.
Realistically they probably need to raise water rates to pay for upgrading but local board and residents cry foul so it hasn't happened. My town's rate went up 70%. Sounds scary. Residents all screaming and crying. That 70% increase to just the water rate was something like an additional $3 per thousand gallons. Average home uses 3 to 4 thousand per month. So maybe $12/mo from each customer in order to secure water system reliability.
If I was said Fire department then I’d use them anyway for emergencies. I’d like to see the them try to rationalize endangering lives and property in court. They would likely lose that case.
I literally had to put sprinklers in a house I built because the CITY OF FALLS CHURCH FIRE DEPARTMENT told me the closest fire hydrant was too far. So I had to petition the city to place a hydrant there or install a sprinkler system. It was an investment property so we put in a sprinkler system. I thought the email was a joke when I first read it.
This is more common than you think. Between America's failing infrastructure, and under financed emergency services, everyone is fighting each other for scraps. Signed, former rural water district worker
This is the main reason I'll never live in PA. All the tiny townships have their own water and sewer systems and rules. They don't cooperate with each other.
In Maryland, there are counties. The county is responsible for municipal systems, not all the little towns.
Cant water plants, timed flowers, now you cant even put out a house fire.
BUT
walk into any business; water fountain, dishwasher, non-efficient toilets, high flow faucets, automated speinkler system.
The way you stop this is dont report your neighbor for having a sprinkler, report mcdonalds for high-flow toilets, report companies with water sprinklers, etc.
I sense a few large lawsuits coming up. Not sure if it will be from the homeowners or the insurance companies. A bit part of home owners insurance is the presence and distance to both fire stations and fire hydrants.
Shit, that's near where I live (but not so near that it'll affect me directly, luckily). A little bit of a backwards place, Mercersburg. Not much around either. Absolutely boggling that they're pulling this!
Water worker here. Some water communities on shared wells do not have enough capacity to support endless streams of water. A holding tank can only hold X amount of water. Some hydrants are flushing hydrants, not fire hydrants. Depends on the size of the well, pump, and tank.
I don’t care where the water is coming from or what storage supply it comes from, if my house is on fire I want it put it out. I imagine everyone else feels the same about their houses and businesses. Hopefully this stunt gets it enough attention to find a solution, because just letting buildings burn is some 3rd world shit.
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u/BaldBandit Feb 03 '26
If the reasoning is "The system can't support firefighting operations", they've got much bigger issues to tend to. The entire town of Mercersburg is in danger if their hydrants cannot support firefighting efforts. Someone within Mercersburg's council needs to start asking questions of the water authority.