One of the responsibilities of Gloucester’s Public Utilities Department is to service fire hydrants that are connected to the water system throughout the county.

Since many of the hydrants have some age on them, Utilities employees were finding that the tops were difficult to turn to get inside the hydrants, and then once the tops were taken off, found pieces had broken and fallen to the bottom of the hydrant.

Joseph Doster, Senior Utility Maintenance Technician, saw the amount of time and money that was being spent in performing maintenance on fire hydrants in the county and developed a pair of tools to make the process simpler.

The new tools, which fetches pieces of broken materials from the bottom of hydrants being serviced, has proven to save county taxpayers approximately $30,000 in staff time and materials since it was implemented just over a year ago, a county release stated. One tool removes the tops of the hydrants. The other tool retrieves the broken materials from ...