
New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries - rshrsh
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-yorkers-have-been-illicitly-cracking-open-fire-hydrants-for-centuries
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plonh
This is good government as a _public service_ , better than viewing the public
as criminals-in-waiting:

>Since 2007, the New York City DEP has multiple programs to combat the illicit
opening of the city’s hydrants. With very few exceptions, you can go to pretty
much any firehouse in the five boroughs and ask for a spray cap. The fire
department will come to the hydrant of your choosing, open it up for about 12
hours, and install a cap that creates several thinner streams of water, like a
giant lawn sprinkler. This cap uses only about 25 gallons of water per minute

> And the DEP has a team called the Hydrant Education Action Team (HEAT),
> arrays of volunteer teens who go around their neighborhoods telling people
> about the dangers of opening hydrants and the benefits of spray caps.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I live in New York, I've seen kids on our block, and their parents, playing
with one of those - including a shower-head attachment! - pretty much every
day this week. It looks great - it's hot and humid as hell right now, a lot of
families don't have an air conditioner, and there's not exactly a lot of
public pools around (and forget water parks, or swimming in the rivers.)

This seems like a pretty good way of making sure people are happy and healthy.

~~~
setpatchaddress
From a native Californian perspective, it just looks insanely wasteful of
water. These are fed from some non-potable source, at least?

...Read TFA, nope. OK then. It is insanely wasteful of water.

~~~
msandford
> OK then. It is insanely wasteful of water.

It's only a "waste" if the water is scarce. People rarely talk about wasting
air (except to call someone dumb) because the air is virtually unlimited.

For example in the UK it's damn near impossible to waste water because it
rains so consistently. Water isn't scarce. You can't really waste it, because
there's always plenty more.

Even if you could pipe the water from NYC all the way to CA it'd be
prohibitively expensive.

So the only way this is "waste" is if it's depleting the aquifer faster than
it replenishes. That's possible of course. But unlikely, because NYC has been
huge for hundreds of years now. If they're depleting aquifers it's only _very_
slowly.

~~~
benev
Here in the UK we do have pretty regular problems with the water supply, to
the point that hosepipe use is sometimes regulated. There's even a website you
can check to see if there's currently a hosepipe ban:
[http://www.hosepipeban.org.uk/hosepipe-ban-current-
situation...](http://www.hosepipeban.org.uk/hosepipe-ban-current-situation/)

It does rain a lot here, but there's also issues with the size of the
reservoirs and the amount of water being drawn.

~~~
msandford
Point taken!

I visited Scotland in the spring and there was water trickling everywhere. I
should have qualified my statement much better.

The other error I made was extrapolation from Scotland to the whole of the UK.
Here in the US it takes a lot of travel to go from one "region" to another,
and the conditions change slowly. But I could see that the whole of the UK
doesn't necessarily have uniform conditions either.

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partisan
I have memories of being in a school bus during the summer and driving through
streets with open hydrants. Without fail, the kids manning the hydrant would
grab a can and use it to direct the water towards the bus. The first time it
happened, we all got wet, along with our books, papers, calculators, etc.
After that, the bus driver would stop the bus and we would close all of the
windows before going through.

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ArekDymalski
>For Centuries

Forgive me, pure pet peeve: it's a tiny bit more than one century - the 1st
reported issue is from 1906.

Anyway, it's great to see an example of looking for a solution instead of
penalizing people.

~~~
a1369209993
My first though on reading the headline was "has New York even _had_ fire
hydrants for centuries?". It seems they actually just barely have.

~~~
jimmcslim
As the adage goes, "Americans think 100 years is a long time, Europeans think
100 miles is a long way"...

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weeksie
One of my favorite things is when my dog gets near an open pump in the summer.
The little maniac makes lunges at the stream(s) with his snout and then backs
off, then repeats the whole routine until he's pretty much water-logged
himself. Then he lays down in the gutter like a tiny hippo.

But for serious, those open pumps are so much a part of city life. You get
families out barbecuing on the sidewalk, the kids playing in the water, people
stopping to douse their heads or wash their hands. Cars slowing down as they
pass to get a half-assed wash. That sort of stuff.

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doki_pen
In the 80s, the local FD used to attach some weird pipe/sprinkler system to
the fire hydrants around my hood to prevent people from doing it themselves.
It was pretty awesome, we'd be playing in that all day.

~~~
noer
I think it's mentioned in other comment threads, but IIRC, you can go to
pretty much any firehouse and ask for sprinkler cap for a hydrant

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alexc05
OH my god! I've just had the greatest idea.

It's like UBER for cracking open fire hydrants.

See you all at the next YC pitch-day

~~~
Facemelters
Uber would just add a tab to their app.

~~~
alexc05
of course! I was actually just trying to make a dumb joke though. "It's like
uber for dumb jokes"

