Arcata artists and art fans will be excited to know that the City is adding more color to its streets, with a plan to invite local painters to creatively decorate fire hydrants, and possibly crosswalks, along G and H Streets. And the city wants your input on what this new public art should look like. 

One of the fire hydrants on H Street in Arcata | Photo from the City of Arcata

The project is a part of the City’s efforts to improve the look of the area of town known as the “G and H Corridor” – the section of G and H Streets that runs roughly between Sunset Avenue and the Arcata Plaza, connects Cal Poly Humboldt to the downtown area and sees a lot of foot, bike and vehicle traffic. Funding for the project will come out of $4.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, $200,000 of which the City Council set aside for beautification and economic recovery efforts in the downtown area. 

Emily Benvie, deputy director of the city’s community and environmental services department, said that the project is partially inspired by Eureka’s public art projects, like the murals added to the city through the Eureka Street Art Festival. Arcata city staff have met a couple of times with some of the festival organizers to get tips on how to roll out this project. The idea to have artists paint the city’s fire hydrants is also very similar to Eureka’s utility box art program, where different artists were commissioned to revamp the city’s dull and unsightly utility boxes. Arcata staff chose fire hydrants instead, Benvie said, because there a lot of them (somewhere around 10 along G and H Streets) and they are small and relatively easy to paint. 

“Part of the reason we chose fire hydrants initially, and potentially crosswalks, is because they are small, discrete objects that are within the city right of way,” Benvie told the Outpost in a phone interview Thursday. “And since this is a new program, we’re really wanting to start out small to move through the process and sort of work through implementation of that program on a smaller scale.” 

Of course, when it comes to painting fire hydrants there are rules that the city will have to follow. In a recent phone interview with the Outpost Ed Laidlaw, fire marshal for the Arcata Fire District, seemed a little skeptical of the idea because of the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) regulations around fire hydrant colors. NFPA code 291 states that “the body of all public fire hydrants should be chrome yellow, unless another color has already been adopted as a standard for the community.”  

Now, you’ve likely seen fire hydrants in other colors elsewhere in the world. These colors indicate the hydrant’s water flow capacity – red means the hydrant flows less than 500 gallons per minute (GPM), orange indicates a water-flow capacity of 550 to 999 GPM, green is 1,000 to 1,499 GPM, etc. Yellow, which is the color of Arcata’s hydrants, indicates that the water comes from the public supply system. 

In addition to letting firefighters know the water-flow capacity, Laidlaw said, the paint color is also meant to make the hydrants easy for firefighters to recognize when they are on a call. 

“As firefighters, we know in this area – in the Humboldt Bay Area –  to look for yellow hydrants,” Laidlaw told the Outpost. “ I mean, we have maps and data that’s available to us to be able to identify our hydrants. We know where they are, but it helps if we can just see it. That’s why people don’t park in front of a fire hydrant, so that we can visibly see it.”

Though the firefighters are the ones who use the hydrants, they are technically owned by the City of Arcata and the city can choose to allow for the hydrants to be painted other colors. Many other communities, including Emmaus, Penn., Monona, Wis., and Chicopee, Mass., have adopted fire hydrant art projects, and several of them were a collaborative effort with the fire departments. 

Benvie said that the City has connected with the Arcata Fire District on this project and will continue to work with the fire district to ensure that all the changes are compliant with fire safety guidelines and standards. 

The project is still in the planning phase, so no changes will be made to the hydrants just yet. Right now the City is working to gather community input, to see what type of art the residents of Arcata would like to see on G and H streets. You can take the city’s public art survey at this link. The survey will be open until March 10. 

After the survey has closed and staff has had time to compile and review the results, the city will put out a call for artists who would like to participate. The artist will be asked to submit a proposal, which will be reviewed by city staff and other local stakeholders, including representatives from the Arcata High School District, Cal Poly Humboldt, Playhouse Arts and the Sanctuary.

The selected artists will be compensated for their work, though the city has not yet determined the payment amount. Benvie said she is hoping that the call for artists will go out sometime in spring and that the painting can begin in the summer. 

“I definitely encourage the public to take the survey,” Benvie told the Outpost. “We’re really interested to hear what folks’ thoughts are.”