WHY OHIO? WHY NOT CALIFORNIA?

Today I came across something curious while walking down the sidewalk of the 300 block of Warren Street.  Standing next to a fire hydrant, a male in a bright orange vest had a large pair of headphones over his ears that were attached to a small probe in his hand.  He wiped the bit of snow off the very top of the hydrant and touched the end of the probe to it, then stood quietly for about one minute as if listening for something.  Then he got into an unmarked car (no logo) and drove a few hundred feet to the next hydrant to do the same thing over.

As I began to ask the worker in the vest what he was doing, another car drove up and a male with the same vest got out and was happy to answer all my questions.  He claimed to be "one of the project managers."  Here is a summary of our conversation. 

The company they work for, GPRS, with its name printed on their vests, is based in Dayton, Ohio.   (The company is called Ground Penetrating Radar Systems, LLC).  These two workers were in Hudson solely to check the pipes leading to every fire hydrant in the city for leaks in the manner described above.  Somehow the worker will hear a leak in the line leading to the hydrant if there is one to hear.  The company was hired by the Hudson DPW Water Department, and I was told that the Water Department does not do this kind of testing themselves.  GPRS will make the Water Department aware of any leaks it finds, but it will not fix those leaks.

To get from Dayton, Ohio to Hudson to help a co-worker have a listen for drips in our hydrant lines, the manager flew on a plane.  I did not find out how far the other worker travelled to get here, but it could have been as far away as Dayton, Ohio.  They were both driving rental cars without, as I said, any logo.  The manager said this project would take one week to complete.  

The technology that the "listener" was using seemed pretty simple (suspiciously simple, even comical) -- a small metal hand-held probe attached to a wire, then a small box of some sort attached to the worker's clothing, then more wire attached to a pair of headphones.  The probe, if that's what it is called, was no more than 8 inches long, most of which is the handle, with a one- or two-inch piece of thin metal rod sticking out. For this we hired and flew someone out from Ohio to help listen to our hydrants?  The Hudson Water Department can't get their hands on one of these divining rods?  Is it proprietary technology?  Is this device really able to find leaks every time there is a leak?  How large does the leak need to be to be detected with the headphones?  How close to the hydrant does the leak need to be to be detected?  I have never heard mention of this company or this activity during any of Robert Perry's monthly DPW reports, which isn't to say that it hasn't happened.

When Hudseen discovers how much the city taxpayers paid to have one or two guys flown in from Ohio for a week to check our hydrant lines for leaks, I will post it right away.  Stay tuned.

Note:  Two days after this posting, I spoke with a DPW Water Department employee working on State Street. He told me that GPRS was NOT hired by the City of Hudson to assess our hydrant lines.  Rather, GPRS contacted Hudson DPW and offered to assess our hydrant lines/listen for leaks as a way to train their employees at no charge to the City of Hudson, and DPW agreed to it.  This is in contradiction to the project manager who I spoke to on Tuesday who said that the City of Hudson had hired his company to do the work. He mentioned nothing about training.

The DPW Water employee also told me that the technology GPRS uses to listen to our hydrant lines is available to the DPW, but that it is "very expensive" and "we don't have the training to use it."