Fire hydrants are an important part of the urban environment. After all, without them how are fire fighters supposed to fight fires? So you'd think keeping New York's 109,217 fire hydrants in good working order would be a top priority for the DEP (which is in charge of them). And yet a new audit from the comptroller's office would prove you wrong.

The DEP has a working goal to fix hydrants designated "high priority" by the FDNY within 10 days of problems being reported (they don't state a goal for low-priority hydrants). And they make that goal about 62% of the time. Its the other 38% that is the problem, especially in boroughs like Staten Island and Brooklyn where the average number of days to resolve a hydrant issue is 33.4 and 26.6, respectively. Queens had the best record with an average of 10.1 days, followed by Manhattan at 10.3 with an overall average for the city of 18.3 days. The DEP could not explain the discrepancies between boroughs.

Most of the time the DEP is getting the job done. The real problem, though, are outliers like the defective hydrant outside of P.S. 25 on Lafayette Avenue in Bed-Stuy. It took the DEP more than a year to fix that one for no discernable reason.

So how to get better results? For one, the DEP needs to set some rules down. As of now the agency has "no written standard of what an appropriate response time should be" and, according to the comptroller's office, does "not properly track repairs to fire hydrants." Luckily the DEP appears to agree with the audits findings. So we'll see.

In the meantime, if you spot a malfunctioning hydrant you should report it to 311. The DEP will get to it... eventually.