My neighbors are opening fire hydrants on my street every day now. The hydrants sit open all night at full blast (not a trickle, full force spray all over the street).

The first night this happened, I asked a question about this, in a non-nyc-focused forum. I said I had made a few calls to 311 over the night and they took the info, but no one came to turn off the hydrant was still on full blast.

Most people in the forum told me to forget it or said I was naive to think turning off a hydrant would be a priority for the city.

Do you think I should let it go and not call when a hydrant is on full blast all night? Does it not matter?

Stop by your local fire house and let them know. As far as I know, we're allowed to open the hydrants if we first get a cap from the fire dept. that produces a beautiful fountain of water instead of a flood.

Once that's taken care of, go out and join in!

No one will come to turn the hydrant off either. As I see it, even w/a sprinkler cap on, it is the lazy parents way of letting their kids cool off. Most parks have sprinklers for the kids to play under.

When I was a kid, the moms at the park got a permit from the city to close off a part of the street near the playground. It was a one way street and not at all busy. We didn't have sprinklers in our park so the city abided. The PD even gave us barriers. Now that park has sprinklers and there isn't an excuse for taking your kid to the park as opposed to being lazy & letting them play in the middle of the street.

Open hydrants are a huge pet peeve of mine. My parents pay a water bill & if there's a drought they are told when they can water their shrubs and plants. Yet if you live in some ghetto dump, you can run the hydrant full blast & no one will do a thing about it. Those who live around the open hydrants have either no water pressure or no water at all & sometimes have brown water.

You must be new to this. Welcome to NYC.

I find it amazing that they can be left on, or for that matter used in such a way. Here in Australia water is such an important issue, especially for the last few years with so much of the country affected by drought we are not even allowed to have sprinklers on. In Sydney we can water our gardens on Sunday and Wednesday by handheld hose before 9am and after 4pm and are not allowed to wash our cars in our driveways (that is a pollution issue as well) and in Brisbane they can't water their gardens at all.

Where does this water run off to? Wouldn't it be washing all sorts of things, chemicals, etc into the stormwater drains and then the rivers?

I agree Marea, we have had a wet spring so Denver's water restrictions have yet to be announced, but announce they will. I have been working hard to use less water in the yard.