Richard Froese
South Peace News
Big Lakes County supports a plan by the fire department to install dry hydrants to increase water supply in strategic areas.
Dry hydrants provide rural areas with a sustainable water supply when fighting both wildland and structure fires.”
At its interim budget meeting Dec. 4-5, council approved $52,000 in the 2024 operating budget to hire a contractor to develop a proposal for the hydrants.
Fire chief Jason Cottingham says dry hydrants would be a great asset to the Big Lakes Country Fire Services.
“It’s a water source we can access quite easily,” Cottingham says.
He wants dry hydrants to be located in hamlets and rural areas of the county in the next few years.
“The contractor would identify sites for fire hydrants,” Cottingham says.
Dry hydrants help firefighting in all areas, cites a report from Pat Olansky, director of community services and planning.
“Plus, a dry hydrant can augment the hamlets’ pressurized hydrant system by taking pressure off the water treatment plants.”
She adds dry fire hydrants would have been valuable in fighting a fire at the St. Bernard Mission Church in Grouard on May 22.
“When the fire service was called to the Grouard church fire, the fire service used three pressurized hydrants at a water source,” Olansky says.
“The fire service drew down the storage capacity of the Grouard treatment plant in less than two hours.”
She says the fire service had to stop using the pressurized hydrants as the storage system was nearly empty and had to find an alternative water supply.
“Finding a sustainable long-term water supply in the county can be a challenge for the fire service,” Olansky says.
“Within the county, there are a multitude of water sources outside the pressurized hydrants system the fire service can tap into.”
Dry hydrants can be a cost-effective alternative to a pressurized hydrant while taking into consideration location, access and maintenance.
Insurance companies take into consideration dry hydrants as with pressurized hydrants when evaluating insurance coverage for residents.
Olansky says the project would start with Phase 1, the planning stage to identity cost-effective sites, including existing infrastructure that can be adapted easily with little investment and would include the Hilliard’s Bay intake, the Joussard intake and the Faust intake as examples.
The second phase would be to identify static water sources around the county which can be developed in a cost-effective manner.
Priorities for those sites would be distance from and existing was source and the number of residences impacted by locating a dry fire hydrants.