City workers rehabbing fire hydrants

Commerce workers are winding down a maintenance program for the city’s 2,000 fire hydrants.

City manager Pete Pyrzenski found hydrant maintenance to be an issue during his initial assessment of city needs after he was hired last fall.

Motorists may have noticed some hydrants wrapped in black plastic bags. They represent fire plugs with maintenance issues.
“They are not inoperative,” Pyrzenski pointed out. “It (the wrapping) signifies to the firemen if there is a fire in the area that hydrant has low water pressure issues.”



To date, the city has replaced four hydrants and is getting rebuild kits for a number of others.

“We are going to accelerate the process with a contractor to look at and evaluate the valves and the hydrants themselves,” Pyrzenski explained. “We are down to 45 that need maintenance.”

In addition, the city’s daytime fire crew is repainting hydrants throughout the system.

“This hasn’t been done in quite some time, so we are rapidly working on this for the fire department,” the city manager said.