Park Water Company maintains their system through three separate programs; Meter change our flushing, and valve and fire hydrant services. Park will attempt to contact you in advance of any scheduled maintenance. However, in the event of an emergency repair, there will not be an opportunity to provide prior notice.

 

Meter change-out program

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) requires utilities to periodically test its water meters. Due to the high cost of testing, and possibly repairs to their meters, Park has chosen to replace meters less than 2”. In compliance with the CPUC rules, Park replaces 5/8” and 1” meters every 15 years, and 1-1/2” and 2” meters every 10 years.

 

Meters 3” and larger are tested every 5 years. Through experience we have found that these meters no longer read accurately after 20 years. In addition, replacement parts are difficult to obtain and are not cost effective.

 

Flushing Program

Flushing is a common practice for improving water quality, and to a lesser extent, for removing any sediments that have accumulated in the pipes. Flushing is performed by isolating a section of the distribution system and then opening up valves or fire hydrants to flush-out the pipeline.

 

Based on the particular need, Park has utilized spot flushing, dead-end flushing, and overall system-wide flushing. Spot flushing is used in response to a customer’s call about “dirty” water. This involves flushing an isolated area to maintain water quality. Dead-end flushing is used to prevent stagnant water on dead-end water mains where the quality of the water can degrade over time.

 

Scheduled system-wide flushing is a long term preventive maintenance program. This type of flushing involves changing the flow patterns throughout an entire water system. This flow reversal scours the water mains and ensures quality water delivered to our customers.

  

Valve and Fire Hydrant Services

The three distribution systems that Park Water operates have approximately 4530 water main line gate valves ranging from 2" to 20" in diameter. These gate valves are important to the water company when it comes to maintenance of the system. We use these valves to isolate sections of water main to make repairs. Making sure these valves operate and remain in the correct position is very important in maintaining good water quality and to providing adequate fire flows for local fire departments. Our valve crews exercise these valves on a regular basis to make sure they remain in working condition. The valve program normally takes 1 ½ to 2 years to operate each and every valve in the three systems. As the crew gathers the information in the field they also enter it into a computerized tracking system. If a valve is not operating properly or is broken, it is reported and scheduled for repair or replacement.

Park Water has a total of 1620 fire hydrants located in our Compton, Lynwood and Bellflower-Norwalk systems. The fire hydrant program takes about 1 to 1 ½ years to complete because each hydrant is inspected and tested thoroughly to make sure that they are ready to serve the Fire Departments in their respective cities.

All hydrant flows are cataloged in a computerized data base and compared to previous flows to ensure system integrity.