Hydrant Guard Success Story: The City of Pomona
After more than 30 years in the water industry, Danny Aceves knows how things work on (and under) the ground. Since his promotion to Distribution Supervisor for the City of Pomona, he’s been tasked, among other priorities, with a bigger challenge: how to protect city assets and private property from broken hydrants.
Danny’s team deals with a hydrant shear roughly once every 10 days. The vast majority of hydrant shears don’t make the news (in 15 years at Pomona, Danny hasn’t seen a single one picked up in the media). He considers this fortunate but doesn’t take it for granted. Within their district is a high-pressure zone rated at approximately 200 psi. Danny knows a shear there could easily be serious enough to capture headlines.
His solution is to protect the entire high-pressure zone, installing a Hydrant Guard on every high-risk hydrant throughout the district. Pomona has been installing Hydrant Guard breakaway check valves for two years, and they’re expanding their installations this year. “Shears can put a lot of people out of water,” he says. “If someone hits a hydrant, it can damage way below the pipes – let alone if that water is shooting up, hitting power lines.”
The City of Pomona trialed a number of hydrant check valves before deciding on Hydrant Guard. Danny remembers when Jesse Anderson, HG’s Head of Sales, first showed him a Hydrant Guard: “This thing caught my eye. I immediately called my engineer for her to look at it.” Right away, Danny was ready to make his case to the city highlighting Hydrant Guard’s long-term value: “Some of the higher-ups can’t get out into the field, so we put a display together and showed them and they liked it.”
All the while, Jesse and Danny never lost touch. Danny says customer service has been top notch, and his team loves installing our breakaway check valves. Along with easy installation, another big advantage Danny sees in Hydrant Guard is that its light weight actually reduces the risk of workplace injury.
In California, we all have a duty toward water conservation. But water districts and municipalities like the City of Pomona are also responsible for looking after their residents and workers alike. The Hydrant Guard team is proud to help them fulfill this important duty.
