ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – Extending a water line from the end of Martinque Drive in Orange Beach and under the channel at Orange Beach Marina to Cove Drive will give the street fire hydrants for the first time.

Also, the new eight-inch line will improve fire protection from Happy Harbor to Boggy Point boat launch on Marina Road.

“Martinque is a dead end line,” Orange Beach Water Authority Superintendent Jeff White said. “Quite a pretty long one. We’ve actually got a six-inch and an eight-inch line running down there but they dead end at Martinque.

“Cove Drive is a three-inch line that’s never had fire protection, as well as everything east of Safe Harbor Marina. Actually it’s Happy Harbor now.”

When the pipe is laid, it will also come out of to the intersection of Cove Drive and Marina Road and be installed west to where a six-inch line along Marina Road ends.

“We’re doing the bore from Martinque to connect those dead end lines which is going to improve fire flow for Marina Road, all of Martinque and north Terry Cove area as well as provide fire protection for Cove Drive and east of Happy Harbor and go down to Boggy Point boat launch,” White said.

Fire Chief Shane Phillips said the new lines and connections will create higher water volume in the entire area.

“What they’re doing is putting a loop in the system so that will actually make the pressure and the volume a lot better for us,” Phillips said.

On his first day in Orange Beach about a year ago, Phillips said, there was a fire on Cove Drive and he found out there were no hydrants in the area.

“I contacted the water authority and they were magnificent,” Phillips said. “They said we’re going to get on this. Jeff White was coordinating that effort. He called me maybe four or five months ago and told me it was coming.

“How that works for us, it’s perfect. There’s nothing worse, like on that house fire, you’ve got more water than you could ever use in the bay back there, but you just couldn’t get there and there were no hydrants on that street. That’s cumbersome. They have been fantastic. They’re always asking ‘what do you need.’”

Phillips said most of the city’s neighborhoods already have hydrants and he is hoping to have them in all areas as soon as possible.

“We’d like for there to be, in an ideal situation, hydrants every 500 feet, and for the most part there are,” he said. “But there are some areas where they are 1,000 feet, and we’re OK with that, too.”

The current three-inch line on Cove Drive on the south side will remain and the new eight-inch pipe will go along the north side.

“This will give us an excellent eight-inch flow around Cove Drive,” White said. “It should vastly improve all of this flow. All of this is done for safety. It doesn’t benefit us whatsoever. We’re nonprofit. We’re just spending money best we can to help people, as many people as possible.”

Years ago, White said, the city torn down a bridge over the canal south of Marina Road and that took out a line.

“We came in about eight years ago, 10 years ago and did a bore under and reconnected Marina Road and this and it increased this fire flow to 750, almost tripled it,” White said. He said it will increase even more when the Cove Drive project and connections are finished.

The actual first pipe going into the bore hole from Martinque to Cove Drive will be 10 inches, but because of the thickness required in the bore area, the inside of the pipe will hold an eight-inch flow.

“It’s pretty much straight bore,” White said. “It might curve a little bit. We’ve got an easement right down a property line there at the end of Martinque, right straight down the property line pointing at Cove. We’re getting easement from everybody. It’ll go under the channel.”