T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK Joshua Robinson, left, and Daniel Trouten will be upgrading and painting the city of St. Clairsville’s fire hydrants this summer. The hydrants will bear the city colors of red and gray. Aaron Kerner, who was not present for the photo, will be helping as well.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE – Three young St. Clairsville residents plan to spend the summer cracking open some “cold ones,” but they won’t be drinking beer.

As a result, the city’s fire hydrants will be showing some new colors by the end of summer. Service and Safety Director James Zucal said three summer employees will be working to renovate and repaint the hydrants.

“There’s been years of neglect. This is a maintenance issue. We are actually preserving the hydrant,” Zucal said. “They wire-bush it and scrape it and clean it. It’s painted in St. Clairsville colors. We have pride in our community, so we’re doing the red and gray. They’re also greasing the thread on the fittings so if the fire department has to use it, they could get to it easily. They’re all going to be standard. The stand pipe will be red and the caps will be gray.”

Zucal said the three seasonal employees will work full-time for three months.

There are about 300 hydrants in the city; about 30-40 may need to be replaced, although they are all functional or safe.

“Some of them are very, very old. Some of them are 70-80 years old. A lot of them are newer, but they’ve been neglected and haven’t been painted. We’re not sure if they’ve ever been painted, but that’s what we’re doing for city pride,” Zucal said.

“The ones that can be painted are turning out very nice. We’re working on the downtown and Main Street area first,” he said.

He added that all three workers are from the St. Clairsville area. The workers are Joshua Robinson, Daniel Trouten and Aaron Kerner.

“Doing this stuff teaches us a lot about safety,” Trouten said.

“Ain’t nothing like cracking open a cold hydrant with the boys,” Robinson added.