A firefighter academy student in training, demonstrates the flushing of a hydrants at the Las Vegas Fire Department Training Center on 633 N Mojave Rd in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday, April 9, 2024.
Friday, April 12, 2024 | 2 a.m.
From a water truck driver looking to top off their tank to a family filling up their pool on the sly, locals hooking hoses up to fire hydrants and other municipal water sources — referred to as water theft — has historically been a problem in the Las Vegas area, according to local experts.
A new addition to fire hydrants in the city of Las Vegas is designed to mitigate these unmetered uses: hydrant locks.
“What’s happened over the years is people will get a specific type of wrench and they will open up those hydrants and, for lack of a better term, they will steal water,” Las Vegas City Manager Mike Janssen told the city council last week. “The last thing we want to have happen is when our firefighters report to a fire and they come up to a hydrant, they get prepped to connect to it and it’s not working.”
Janssen added that the locks will become a common accessory for many hydrants across Las Vegas.
There are more than 15,000 hydrants within the city limits of Las Vegas, Janssen said. The city “had an opportunity for a partnership” with the Las Vegas Valley Water District to add new locking mechanisms to hydrants that will deter people from stealing water.
Janssen also said the city’s proposed 2025 budget allocates money to hire a new hydrant technician, who will monitor the maintenance of the thousands of hydrants across Las Vegas. Las Vegas Fire & Rescue also employs a hydrant technician.
The new partnership with the Las Vegas Valley Water District will “upgrade the reliability of the hydrants, reduce water waste” and provide firefighters “a device that they can be more reliant on.” The water district would control access keys for authorized water users, and additional keys would be provided to the fire department for emergencies or maintenance, Fire Chief Fernando Gray Sr. said in a statement to the Sun.
“Las Vegas Fire & Rescue has conducted thorough research related to the capability to incorporate a water resource savings/security adjunct into our system,” he said. “Based on our comprehensive assessment, the department is confident that the selected hydrant lock is a reliable and efficient solution. The hydrant lock would not cause any concerns from an operational standpoint and would meet the community’s expectations associated with water conservation.”
Representatives from the water district said they had not yet finalized any formal interlocal agreement with the city but expect that they would fund the locks while the fire department’s hydrant technician installs them.
Water theft — the taking of water not metered by the water district — can causean assortment of different problems. Significant damage can be done to a fire hydrant or the infrastructure that connects the hydrant to the water system, which can negatively affect firefighters responding to emergency situations.
It can also cause water leaks that damage surrounding soil and roads, result in lower water pressure or affect the quality of water within the municipal water system, said Bronson Mack, public information officer at the water district.
Water theft doesn’t only happen with hydrants, and its culprits can be diverse as well as widespread, he added.
Investigators at the water district have found a variety of culprits including residents, contract workers, homeless people and developers trying to pull water from unmetered sources.
The water district recorded 88 violations in the past two years — and those were only the ones the district caught. While the majority of incidents are evenly spread, Mack said there were specific concentrations at areas like construction sites in the middle of the valley, in downtown and along Boulder Highway.
A person who engages in water theft can be charged for estimated water usage at 12 times the applicable rate or for the cost of damage to any water district facilities, according to the agency’s service rules.
There’s also a $5,000 fine for a first water theft violation, and $10,000 fine for subsequent violations within 18 months. For example, someone who steals water to fill up a 5,000-gallon water truck could pay for around 60,000 gallons of water, Mack explained.
“Ultimately, (violators) are paying for that resource that they are using,” said Mack, who explained that the water district has made it “extremely punitive” to commit water theft. “It’s part of their cost of doing business, especially if that’s a company or contractor; this is not a cost-saving measure for them, and the fines are actually intended to not be a cost-saving measure; it is meant to be a deterrent just like the locks.”
Since 2022, the water district has assessed $580,000 in violation fees and about $65,000 in consumption fees, Mack said. It’s almost an evenly split rate of theft from fire hydrants and unmetered connections to the water system, according to data from the water district.
The fire hydrant locks are one way to deter people from taking water — a solution that Mack said the water district had tried to propose for years with some concerns from local fire departments worried about the additional time it may take to unlock the devices during an emergency.
A decade later, it seems times have changed and the need is pertinent.
Mack said there was no agreement with Clark County to lock hydrants in unincorporated areas of the county. He said he was unsure whether therewere any locks on hydrants in North Las Vegas or Henderson.
There is no timeline for when a possible interlocal agreement is reached or the locks installed, the water district said. Jordan Moore, community engagement administrator with Las Vegas Fire and Rescue, told the Sun the fire department already has locks in mind, ones that will not only help secure the hydrants but make them easier to find and help experts identify hydrant flow rate through a color-coding system.
And in what may be considered a fitting situation, the money collected from water theft cases will go into supporting the prevention measures.
“Until such time that we enter into a cooperative agreement with the city of Las Vegas fire department, it’s unknown with regards to what types of locks and what the cost and everything else will be,” Mack said. “But, I can say this: The fines that people are paying for water theft is what is going to fund the purchase of those locks and installation of those locks at least helped to offset that cost.”
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