In his Feb. 13 letter to the editor (“Check Those Hydrants Lately?”) Mr. Ken Keller brought up an extremely important question: When was the last time the fire hydrants in the Santa Clarita Valley were checked by the L.A. County Fire Department? I want to provide Mr. Keller and all Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency customers with an answer and some additional information.
SCV Water is the lead agency for testing and ensuring that fire hydrants are operable in the SCV, within our service area of Santa Clarita, Stevenson Ranch and Castaic. Currently, SCV Water has a routine maintenance schedule for hydrants on a rotating basis. Of the approximately 7,500 hydrants within the service area, around 20% are targeted for maintenance each year.
This maintenance includes SCV Water staff visiting, operating, repairing, replacing (as needed) and painting hydrants. In addition, as new developments are built within the service area, the agency performs fire flow tests using a hydraulic model to ensure there is adequate flow and pressures to meet fire flow requirements. SCV Water also follows Fire Department requirements when installing new hydrants and they are spaced for redundancy.
Additional information on SCV Water’s ongoing dedication to reliability and public safety can be found in Board President Maria Gutzeit’s Feb. 6 column in The Signal titled “SCV Water: Committed to Reliability.”
Mr. Keller — and all SCV Water customers — if you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Kevin Strauss
Communications Manager, SCV Water
Santa Clarita
