Denver Water Rustlers

The Mile High City has all kinds of crime, and this is not the most serious by any means. But, it isn't every day that you see what appears to be somone stealing water across the street from Washington Park. Yes, Colorado is part of the arid mountain West. Yet, there I am, on my morning walk, having seen my boss likewise engaged a few minutes before, at Virginia and Marion Parkway in front of the series of tall condominium buildings that are the tallest landmarks in the area, about a block from the local fire station, at about 7:10 a.m. And, there are two guys hooking up the water tank on their TruGreen truck with a hose to the fire hydrant and filling it up for the day. I didn't see a meter or anything else in sight indicating that they were allowed to do that.

Maybe they have a permit, but I've never heard of such a thing. If you know about such a thing, I'd appreciate hearing about it, as I certainly don't want to defame a landscaping business whose allowed to do this legally.

UPDATE: Denver Water's Water Sales Department does have a bullet point labeled "Hydrant Permits", so perhaps this is legal and there are regulations to allow permits for this kind of thing, so it was probably legal. Still, it certainly looks suspicious. For P.R. purposes alone, permit holders really ought to have big signs that say something like "Hydrant Water Used Pursuant To Denver Water Permit XXXXXXX good through XX/XX/XXXX when they do it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that they look like bandits.