Cal Water briefs council on hydrant inspections, infrastructure upgrades and wildfire resilience work

Representatives from California Water Service (Cal Water) briefed the council on infrastructure upgrades, wildfire resilience projects and their annual fire hydrant inspection and maintenance program.

John Freeman, district manager, introduced Rob Shealy (regional government affairs) and Philip Brown (district superintendent). Brown said Cal Water has pursued an aggressive infrastructure program over recent years that replaced aging mains, upgraded pump stations and reservoirs and improved treatment facilities. As part of wildfire preparedness, Brown said the utility installed interconnection projects (identified in the presentation as the Hansen and Concannon projects) to add critical connections between pressure zones and improve system resiliency during emergencies.

On hydrant work, Cal Water described a yearly inspection program to verify paint condition, accessibility, bolt condition, orientation, visibility at night, bollards where needed and overall operability. Maintenance tasks include marker installation, bolt replacement, greasing and component repairs. Brown emphasized that hydrant inspections and improvements are routine and that historic fire‑response failures during regional wildfires were often due to storage depletion, not hydrant malfunction.

Representatives made themselves available for further technical questions and thanked the council for the opportunity to update the public record.