If you've driven past a fire hydrant and saw water flowing out of it, you may be inclined to think it's a waste of water. It's not. Flushing fire hydrants is an essential part of the process to ensure your water is clean and safe.

The water from your faucets can become discolored or cloudy when there is a significant change in the amount or direction of water flowing in our pipes. This can be caused by a main-line break, a large fire, or by increased water use during the spring and summer months.

Flushing fire hydrants helps us remove the discolored water from the system. You can click these links to learn more about discolored water or water that looks cloudy or milky.

Another reason we flush fire hydrants is for routine testing.

Our water is at its highest quality as it leaves our Verdigris River Water Treatment Plant.

Every month, we perform more than 500 water tests from our distribution system to ensure water quality and to determine which areas need to be flushed and for how long.

As the water moves from the plant to your home, it travels through storage tanks, pump stations, and more than 600 miles of pipe. This process can take hours or weeks depending on the distance from the plant and the design of the system near your home.

We use hydrant flushing to manage the age of the water in some parts of our system and make certain that we maintain the proper chlorine residuals. Chlorine is used to disinfect our water and protect it from bacteria. As the water ages, it can lose some of its chlorine residual.

We continue to replace older pipes and loop the dead-end lines in our system to help reduce the amount of flushing we must perform.

If you have questions about our hydrant flushing program or any other water quality issue, please let us know by calling 918-259-7000 extension 7221 or email us at water_resources@brokenarrowok.gov.

Click here for more Know Your Water articles from the City of Broken Arrow.