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The Dewey Fire Department will conduct fire hydrant flushing in the near future.

Fire Chief Jacob Cox said the hydrant flushing should begin in Dewey on Monday, July 26. Cox said the hope is to complete the work by Friday, Aug. 6. He said they will test every hydrant.

Cox said they will give their findings to dispatch. As the technologies continue to improve at dispatch, Cox said they should be able to relay hydrant information to them when they go out to fight fires in the community. He said dispatch should be able to tell them which hydrants will have the most water flow per gallon as well as the pressure of the water from the hydrant.

Discoloration of water may occur during the hydrant flushing and testing in Dewey. Cox said you should not be alarmed if this occurs.

20-percent of the hydrants were tested in Dewey in 2020. Cox said there have been times where they would respond to a fire and they hydrants wouldn't work properly. He said they want to thoroughly inspect the hydrants and get with Dewey Public Works about which hydrants need to be worked on.

In the next month or so, Dewey Fire will look to spray paint the top of the hydrants so firefighter can determine the water pressure of each hydrant just by looking at it. Cox said blue spray paint will indicate a hydrant that could give off over 1,500 gallons of water per minute. He said green spray paint will indicate 1,000 to 1,499 gallons of water per minute. Orange shows a hydrant that disperses water at a rate of 500 to 999 gallons per minute. Red means less than 500 gallons of water per minute.

Cox said there are more orange hydrants in Dewey than red hydrants, but they want to improve this in the City of Dewey where they can. He said the spray painting of the hydrants will need to be approved by the City of Dewey.