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Fire Hydrant Task Force Launched By Public Service Commision

The Public Service Commission (PSC) launched a task force to address antiquated and defective fire hydrants — like the three fire hydrants that failed to deliver water while a West Side, Charleston house burned down.

Updated on Wednesday, March 20, 2024 at 5:15 p.m.

The homeowner filed a lawsuit against water utility West Virginia American Water. The utility is arguing that it was not their responsibility to guarantee functioning fire hydrants.

A few months after the fire, the PSC launched an investigation into fire hydrants across the state. The investigation depended on utilities to report working fire hydrants. In October, Charlotte Lane, chair of the PSC, asked the West Virginia Legislature to grant the PSC regulatory power over the fire hydrants and asked for a fiscal note for testing.

What the commission got in the end was a bill creating a task force that brings stakeholders and experts to the table to make fire hydrants the responsibility of water utilities — officially.

“People hadn’t really focused on fire hydrants,” Lane said. “The incident on the West Side did bring it into focus and we determined that there was no clear cut law as to who was responsible.”

Lane said the task force will be made up of stakeholders like the West Virginia Rural Water Association, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, county commissioners and fire chiefs.

The task force will meet and discuss adopting national standards for fire hydrants in the state, and review and process rules for managing fire hydrants. Lane said that for fire hydrants, age is just a number, and that “float” testing will determine if the hydrants are adequately functioning.

“I think the magic is that the fire hydrants pass the inspection and the flow testing, and then no matter how old they are, if the water pressure is there, then the fire hydrant should be okay,” Lane said.

Safer fire hydrants could translate into higher water costs for some utilities customers.

“Seems to me that anything dealing with infrastructure today is very expensive,” Lane said. “But that’s one of the facts of life that we need to keep up on.”

She said that if water utilities do not have fire hydrant management and care built into their rates, or if new regulations result in the utilities investing money into hydrants, then it’s possible that utilities will raise rates.

“If that happens, we will scrutinize their numbers. And we will rule on whether or not increases are necessary,” Lane said.

Gov. Jim Justice signed the legislation into law Wednesday.

Warm Sunny Days, Leaf Burns Cause Smokey Skies

An estimated 20 wildfires, mostly in the southern region of the state, have caused the hazy smoky air that many are experiencing this Monday.

John Peck, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said he believes most of the fires are from a combination of weather patterns and human causes.

“We’ve had very dry conditions over the last six days with no measurable rain across most of West Virginia,” Peck said. “That’s allowed the leaves to dry out quite a bit. So, a combination of mostly human causes starts the problem with people burning leaves legally at night,”

In W.Va. it is legal to burn leaves from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. However, if the fires are not distinguished properly, the leaves can reignite when the sun comes up and become larger uncontained fires. This is what Peck believes caused today’s fires and is common in the drier months of the fall.

“The important thing is that if you are burning legally at night, you need to make sure that’s completely out. And make sure it isn’t rekindled during the day,” Peck said.

These local fires are less likely to disturb residents’ airways and allergies than smoke that had traveled from further distances, like the Canadian wildfires this summer, he said.

“With the smoke being so local, the particle size is relatively big. It’s not like the really small stuff that gets down here from the distant wildfires,” Peck said. “So, if (residents) go outside and they are feeling an issue, just masking up will help take care of quite a bit of that”

The National Weather Service is expecting at least a few more days of dry, seasonally-warm weather, with rain expected to begin Thursday or Friday.

“We generally expect these kinds of nuisance fires to keep going for the next few days with relatively smoky air,” Peck Said.

Winds moving in through the week will help keep the smoke from accumulating and becoming denser throughout the week. As new weather fronts move in they will help mix up the smoke, Peck said.

“It’s just going to be the fires upstream of you. The winds, the smokes pooling down wind and it’s spilling into your face, basically. But it’s not going to accumulate. It’s just going to be stuff that’s being produced at the current time,” Peck said.

The Kanawha County Commission has requested the Division of Forest Management to issue a burn ban.

“We have grave concerns that additional forest fires will occur,” said the request signed by Commissioners Ben Salango, Kent Carber, and Lance Wheeler. “State Code prohibits outdoor burning from Oct. 1 through December 31 from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, we believe an additional ban should be enforced.”

PSC Urges Legislators To Address Fire Hydrant Disrepair

Director of the Public Service Commission Charlotte Lane asked that the legislature give the PSC power to regulate fire hydrants in the state so that they comply with the National Fire Protection Association’s recommended practice.

Concern over fire hydrants in the state is on the rise as smaller water providers don’t have the ability to test them.

Director of the Public Service Commission Charlotte Lane asked the West Virginia Legislature during the Joint Standing Committee on Technology and Infrastructure for $7 million; $3 million would be used as grants to cover inspections and testing costs and $4 million would be used as low or no interest loans to water districts so they are able to finance repairs and replacements of fire hydrants.

“There are firms in West Virginia that will do flow testing, and they charge, like, $100 per fire hydrant,” Lane said. “We think that a lot of these small utilities won’t have the money to do the testing.”

Guidelines For Improvement

The Fire Protection Association recommends that hydrants be flow tested every 3-5 years, plus a yearly inspection. According to Lane, those tests are costly and would disproportionately hurt small utilities that have difficulty paying bills and providing potable water to customers.

She also asked that the legislature give the PSC power to regulate fire hydrants in the state so that they comply with the National Fire Protection Association’s recommended practice.

“We don’t promulgate rules without statutory authority. And so if we want to amend our water rules related to fire hydrants, I would request that we have statutory authority,” she said.

Tragedy Sparks Awareness

Awareness around fire hydrants in the state rose after a Charleston man’s house caught fire and multiple fire hydrants were not functioning. West Virginia has double the rate for deaths caused by fire than the rest of the country and is in the top five states for fire-related deaths.

Spouting The Numbers

The PSC asked every water district in the state to test their fire hydrants and fill out a detailed survey about their functionality. They ended up extending the survey from June 28 to Aug. 25 after many districts failed to fill out the survey in time. Currently, 90 percent of water districts have filled out reports with the PSC still waiting on 27 water districts.

The normal lifespan of a fire hydrant is around 50 years, Lane said. Nine in 10 fire hydrants are less than 50 years old. The oldest fire hydrant in the state is 138 years old.

It costs around $15,000 to completely replace a fire hydrant.

The majority of the state’s fire hydrants are utility owned, with around 5 percent being privately owned.

Questions And Caveats

Committee members questioned Lane if any of the repairs would qualify for federal funding, like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Lane said the PSC did not know.

Other members asked questions about the effect of struggling or deteriorating water systems on a new fire hydrant’s ability to function properly. Lane said that part of fixing a fire hydrant could be to remedy the water line that it connects to, which would raise the cost.

Lane said if the legislature follows the recommendations from the PSC the public will be able to be confident that they have functioning fire hydrants in case of a fire.

Update: Legislators Hear Update On PSC Fire Hydrant Investigation

Legislators heard an update about the Public Service Commission’s statewide investigation into the maintenance and testing of fire hydrants at Monday’s interim meetings.

Updated on Tuesday, Aug. 08, 2023 at 10:15 a.m.

The deadline for municipalities and water districts to file reports on the maintenance and testing of their fire hydrants was extended to Aug. 25 in an order issued Monday evening by the Public Service Commission of West Virginia.

“Despite the considerable number of entities that failed to respond, only a handful of entities contacted the commission to request additional time to provide the requested information,” the order said.

The order goes on to note that maintaining accurate and up to date records should be “business as usual” for a public utility and that information pertaining to utility facilities, including information regarding fire hydrants is required annually in the reports water utilities must file.

“We consider this to be a front and center public safety issue for which timing is of the essence and further delay is unacceptable,” the order said.

The order makes it clear there will be no additional extensions granted for any reason, and the PSC will proceed with appropriate actions to advise or direct utility action to protect the public health and safety.

Original Post:

Legislators heard an update about the Public Service Commission’s statewide investigation into the maintenance and testing of fire hydrants at Monday’s interim meetings.

At the end of June, the PSC initiated a general investigation and required all 301 of the state’s utilities that own fire hydrants, or that serve private fire hydrants, to report certain information including the number of hydrants owned or serviced, their age and maintenance schedules and practices by July 28.

However, during the Monday meeting of the Joint Standing Committee on Technology and Infrastructure Jonathan Fowler, PSC engineer, told lawmakers that only about half of utilities have responded.

“The water utilities have never been asked to report anything other than the number of hydrants in their annual reports,” he said. “What we’re trying to do now is to develop a more comprehensive database to reflect the industry standard on maintenance and testing of these hydrants.”

According to Fowler, there is a national standard that specifies that fire hydrants should be inspected annually and should be flow tested either every three years or every five years.

“We are trying to determine how many utilities comply with that standard,” he said.

Fowler said he has been pleasantly surprised at the number of smaller utilities that have written fire hydrant maintenance procedures and documentation.

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, said she was intimately familiar with why the investigation is happening, in reference to a fire in May that burned down a Charleston house where firefighters could not find a functioning hydrant.

“Half of these water utilities are not in compliance,” she said. “What do you do if they don’t respond? These people’s homes are potentially in danger, so how do we best protect our constituents?”

Fowler said there will be a further order issued by the PSC requiring those to respond.

“And I would suppose after this second notification, there may be an additional action by the commission,” he said.

Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, asked if there was a plan to replace inoperable hydrants after the data collection process was concluded.

“Utilities are supposed to repair and maintain their system in accordance with the standards,” Fowler said. “For small utilities costs can be a deterrent.”

He went on to explain that new hydrants being installed on existing lines can cost between $10,000 to $13,000. He explained that hydrants are robustly designed and are designed to be maintained for 100 years.

“We have a few in this state that are over 100 years old. The majority from what I’m seeing in the data responses are less than 50 years old, and you can still get all the parts you need for those,” Fowler said. “So it gets back to an issue of requiring the utility to better maintain the hydrants. We had one utility responded that seven fire hydrants in his system are so old, he’s afraid to open them because he can’t shut them back off. So this is the kind of thing we’re getting. It’s an important public safety question.”

Fowler said once the PSC has received all the information from utilities it will be able to formulate an appropriate response.

PSC Investigating State’s Fire Hydrants

The Public Service Commission has initiated a general investigation to examine the maintenance and testing of fire hydrants.

The commission has ordered that all public utility owners of fire hydrants, or that serve private fire hydrants, provide certain information to the commission by July 28.

They want to know the number of hydrants owned or serviced, their age, descriptions of the infrastructure supporting them, problems or complaints encountered, and maintenance schedules and practices.

One of the commission’s primary charges is to require public utilities to perform in a manner designed to safeguard the interests of the public, including assuring that hydrants will perform adequately.

The investigation comes after a fire in May that burned down a Charleston house where firefighters could not find a functioning hydrant.

In a press release, the commission said if adequate flow cannot be delivered by a particular hydrant, that hydrant is not fulfilling its purpose as part of the water distribution system and the utility owning or serving the hydrant is not providing adequate service.

PSC Chairman Charlotte Lane said they are seeking information and will determine if further action is necessary after evaluation.

Burn Ban Lifted, Standard Rules Apply

After the state received sufficient rain over the weekend, Gov. Jim Justice announced Monday that the recent statewide ban on all types of outdoor burning is over.

Standard spring burning season laws and regulations are in effect.

Burning forestland, grass, grain, stubble, slash, debris, or other materials is allowed only from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Small fires set for the purpose of preparing food or providing light or warmth are permitted anytime without a burning permit, provided all grass, brush, stubble, or other debris has been removed for a minimum distance of 10 feet from the fire in all directions.
Additionally, fires must be attended to at all times, and all fires must be fully extinguished before 7 a.m. daily.

Residents caught violating these regulations face citations and fines of up to $1,000.

The original burn ban was put in place on April 17, 2023 due to expected high winds and dry conditions.

View original proclamation.