In The Middle Of The Night, WPCA Will Be At Work...

You’ve seen it before: a worker manning a hydrant, watching as water gushes, sprays or runs frenetically into the roadway. But why do they do it? And why at night? And where? At every hydrant? Wait, how many are we talking about? How much water is flushed? And what does this even accomplish? Oh, and by the way, where does our water come from anyway?

WPCA will flush Montville hydrants July 24 to July 26

The Water Pollution Control Authority will begin hydrant flushing next Wednesday morning around 2 a.m. and for that day anyway, flushing should be done by 8 a.m.  Then the process will be repeated for up to three days. And under the cover of darkness – for a really good reason, you’ll soon discover -- three WPCA workers will head to the Dock Road area near the Thames River to open a hydrant, we’ll call it Hydrant X. And so the process begins.

“Starting from the source,” WPCA Superintendent Mike Didato said.

Didato explained the process: think of our water lines as appearing like the root system of a large tree, say a big old Oak with voluminous roots spreading from the trunk, so too the water system is like those roots and each one, one by one, needs to be opened and the water needs to run, or gush or spray

One hundred and fifty times, give or take because Montville has somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 hydrants. And each one must be opened and flushed.

And why is it being done in the middle of the night?

WPCA administrator Brian Lynch said the reason is simple: public safety.

“We start at 2 (so as) not to interfere with traffic especially on state roads. We do it in the very earning morning hours for safety. We don’t want to do it when there are cars on Route 32 or 163. A lot of water’s being sprayed,” Lynch said.

 And Lynch said timing is key because the hydrant flushing must be done in synch with both Groton and Ledyard.

 “That’s where we get our water, from Groton to Ledyard to us so we have to coordinate this process; Groton goes, then Ledyard, then us.”

 And they do this why?

“We flush them to keep the pipes clean, keep the hydrants functioning and if there was a problem with a hydrant, we’d know then and be able to address that,” Lynch said.

Didato, who knows his stuff, explained the water’s velocity works as a kind of scrub brush.

“We’re stirring it up, using velocity to chase out any sediment or other encrusted debris,” Didato explained. “We do it just once a year, but it’s important.” And he described it as important “preventative maintenance” of the water system infrastructure.

What does this mean to us?

The flushing process may result in Montvillians seeing cloudier than usual water, so it’s advised that people refrain from doing laundry (I’m fine with that) during the flushing and let water run from the tap for a while before drinking, cooking or other food preparation to ensure the water is clear.