To the community,

The South Lake Tahoe Fire Department will be performing hydrant maintenance on all of the city’s hydrants and flow verification tests on many of them throughout the city in every neighborhood during the months of May and June. This requires the fire department to flow small amounts of water at every hydrant when performing simple maintenance and requires substantial continuous flowing when testing the capacity of the hydrant.

We will only flow the amount of water as needed to perform these tests. Due to system changes and normal usage of the domestic water system, the fire department must verify the ability of the system and its individual hydrants to deliver the proper amount of water to fight fires.

Every hydrant must be tested once every five years as required by the Insurance Services Office in order to verify the flows and maintain current records. When flow testing, the water lines can and do become disturbed causing water to be discolored in homes.

South Tahoe Public Utility District recommends that if this happens, open an outside faucet and run the water until clear. The water companies know that we are performing these tests and services.

The fire department understands that our actions may cause some inconvenience for our citizens but we are attempting to minimize the impact with this notice. Thank you for your patience.

South Lake Tahoe Fire Department