HANCOCK COUNTY — Fire officials are concerned about fire protection in a proposed rural neighborhood where houses will be spaced as closely as 12 feet apart. The reason: The volume of water needed to fight fires won’t be available for some time, and the houses will be vulnerable until then, they say.
Plans call for getting water from detention ponds in the interim, which fire officials say can be time-consuming and come with maintenance issues.
It’s a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma for the water provider, who says supplying the volume for fire protection requires a multimillion-dollar investment it wouldn’t be able to tackle until owners of those proposed homes join its customer base.
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And the developer says while it will try to refrain from building on lots right next to each for as long as possible, promising to do so isn’t financially realistic.
The project is sparking a debate, as residential development continues its climb in rural parts of the county, about how to go about it safely, responsibly and feasibly for the developers.
Greenfield-based RLS Development is planning Mohawk Trails, a 110-lot neighborhood on 40 acres on the east side of County Road 200W north of U.S. 40, near Philadelphia. The Hancock County Commissioners approved standards for the subdivision after the county’s plan commission recommended they do so late last year.
Mohawk Trails would be in the Greenfield Fire Territory’s service area. As more detailed plans start to be considered by officials, territory leaders have expressed concerns about the neighborhood’s water mains not having fire protection flow right away and standards allowing for houses to be 12 to 15 feet apart.
“Hancock County should not ever be allowing neighborhoods to go in that don’t have the fire protection built into them,” said Brian Lott, chief of the Greenfield Fire Territory. “They’re putting the cart before the horse.”
If enough water isn’t available, houses shouldn’t be allowed to be built so close, he added.
The fire territory points to an appendix in the International Fire Code calling for a water supply capable of providing at least 1,000 gallons a minute for one hour with a minimum of 20 pounds of pressure per square inch left over.
But Indiana has not adopted that appendix, which is used for information purposes, making it not legally binding in Hancock County.
NineStar Connect has exclusive rights to provide water services in and around the area of Mohawk Trails. Michael Burrow, president and CEO of NineStar Connect, said the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission has approved NineStar’s plans for providing water service to the area and the utility is in compliance with IURC regulations, which don’t mandate standards for fire flow, duration or protection.
Burrow told the county plan commission in January that NineStar plans to provide fire protection flow to the area within five years, if Mohawk Trails and the nearby Boulders subdivision build out as planned. He said it would entail building a water line that would connect the area’s system to the former Gem Water system that NineStar bought a couple years ago, and in the process provide more than 600,000 gallons of storage.
But if officials kill the project because fire protection flow is lacking, the area won’t get that flow because NineStar needs the new customers to help fund it.
“It’s a ‘crawl, walk, run’ type of investment,” Burrow said.
Harold Gibson, owner and president of Greenfield-based H. Gibson Land Surveying, which is working with RLS Development on Mohawk Trails, agreed requiring full-fledged water service for fire protection is problematic.
“If we had to provide water mains and hydrants in projects we do in this county, development would go to a crawl,” he said.
In the interim
Mohawk Trails would have two detention ponds, and RLS Development plans to equip both with two fixtures called “dry hydrants” that firefighters would be able to use to access water in the ponds.
Lott said when using a dry hydrant, water has to be pushed in from a fire truck to remove air from the pipe and create suction for drafting out of the pond. The process can take between five and 15 minutes. And when a house is on fire that’s 12 feet from its neighbor’s, just the radiant heat is enough to cast other structures ablaze within that time, Lott said.
He also called dry hydrants “a maintenance nightmare.” As silt rises in ponds, it clogs hydrants’ inlets. The fire territory performs maintenance on dry hydrants annually. When it recently serviced dry hydrants at Heartland Resort north of Greenfield, six of the eight were clogged, Lott said.
Carl McIntyre of RLS Development said he’s spoken with the fire territory about equipping the dry hydrants’ inlets with compartments that would block silt from getting in. He said they’ve also discussed installing water lines near the hydrants for displacing air from pipes and achieving a draft more quickly. McIntyre said the engineer designing the subdivision will consider both ideas.
“The most important thing is we want to be safe,” McIntyre said. “We don’t want to build a neighborhood that we’re going to be worried about.”
Other parts of the fire territory have dry hydrants, including Fairway Village south of Greenfield and subdivisions near Maxwell, but lots are bigger and houses are farther apart, Lott said.
The fire territory asked RLS Development to only build on every other lot in Mohawk Trails until the fire protection flow could be achieved.
“Unfortunately it’s not financially feasible,” McIntyre said. “But can we make an effort in the beginning to kind of space them out? Sure, absolutely, and we’re willing to do that.”
The county plan commission unanimously approved a preliminary plat for Mohawk Trails after Gibson said those on the development side would continue talking with the fire territory ahead of consideration for the secondary plat.
Mike Long, a plan commission member, said he appreciated the fire territory bringing the matter to officials’ attention.
“Normally the dense subdivisions are happening in municipal areas where the water supply is there,” Long said. “This is sort of a newer thing, so it’s a very good point.”
Countywide concerns
Other Hancock County fire officials share the Greenfield Fire Territory’s concerns about fire protection as the county continues to grow.
Tony Bratcher, public information officer for the Sugar Creek Township Fire Department, said Lott’s right to be worried about houses close together without a fire-protection level of water supply coursing through the neighborhood’s mains.
“You have a high probability of having two fires instead of one,” Bratcher said.
It can even force firefighters to have to decide between saving the first house on fire or the one it spreads to, he added.
Bratcher said Sugar Creek Township has eight dry hydrants. In his 15 years with the department, he’s never used one, but he said they are an asset.
“One thing our county lacks is water supply,” he said. “We always fall short due to the lack of hydrants out there.”
That shortcoming negatively impacts scores for setting insurance rates, Bratcher also said.
David Sutherlin, chief of the Buck Creek Township Fire Department, said none of the neighborhoods in his department’s service area have houses as close as 12 feet that also lack fire protection water flow.
“Where we don’t have water, there are greater distances between homes,” he said.
Sutherlin added the anxieties over Mohawk Trails are merited.
“Chief Lott has an absolute genuine concern because of the clearances between homes,” he said.
He echoed the fellow fire chief’s feelings on dry hydrants.
“The opportunity to use a dry hydrant might be better than nothing, but it is pretty close to nothing,” Sutherlin said.
He estimated there are about a dozen in Buck Creek Township.
“I ask for them in these industrial complexes because even where I have water mains, some of the load calculations for those water mains are lacking in their ability to deliver, so having that dry hydrant there, at least for me, anyway, is an assurance that at least I’ve got an opportunity to draft if I need to,” he said.
Sutherlin said properties like University Loft, Tsuda and Amazon off County Road 300N between 400W and 500W are on a dead end main. Farther down 300W, closer to County Road 700W, where Indianapolis-based Opus Development Co. is building several speculative buildings, there’s a looped main with water coming in from two different directions, providing much more residual pressure.
In the case of a bad fire where water pressure is lacking, Sutherlin said he can ask the 911 center to call and ask the area’s water provider — Citizens Energy Group — to increase pressure and provide what’s needed within five to 10 minutes.
Sutherlin called these concerns part of the county’s growing pains and said they’re not meant to denounce utility providers or developers.
“It’s not our intent to stifle growth,” he said. “We want that AV (assessed value) just as bad as anybody does. With some of the realizations of what’s going on, the county’s got some hard decisions to make on adopting some ordinances that they’re going to have to hold builders to, NineStar to, anybody else who’s delivering water — Citizens — the list goes on. We’re a country that likes standards.”
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"Hancock County should not ever be allowing neighborhoods to go in that don’t have the fire protection built into them. They’re putting the cart before the horse."
–Brian Lott, chief of the Greenfield Fire Territory
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"The opportunity to use a dry hydrant might be better than nothing, but it is pretty close to nothing."
–David Sutherlin, chief of the Buck Creek Township Fire Department
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