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Backflow Valve Controversy Raining Unanswered Questions
By Melody Jameson melody@observernews.net
Jul 19, 2007, 14:26

When it comes to Hillsborough County’s forced installation of expensive backflow prevention valves on some Southshore properties, the questions are raining but answers are in a drought.

Queries are spilling into the email inboxes of elected officials and being tossed from neighbor to neighbor and directed to local news media.  Responses, though, are in short supply as many among the elected representatives and employed staff simply do not reply.

Amid the resounding silence, however, early this week a small drop hinting at possible reconsideration of the “onerous” county ordinance behind a ham-handed enforcement effort issued from county attorneys.

Apollo Beach homeowner Jerry Tootle for years - and without any adverse effects - watered his yard and plants by pulling irrigation from this freshwater pond. The process ended - and his landscaping began to shrivel - when the county demanded he pay a plumber hundreds of dollars to install a backflow valve to prevent alleged contamination of the public water supply. No such contamination was possible, Tootle said, but he stopped irrigating rather than knuckle under to the county tactics. Melody Jameson Photo

A Little Background
Controversy over the county’s mandated installation of backflow preventer valves on certain South County residential properties began to gather steam about a month ago.  Apollo Beach and Sun City Center residents complained inspectors from Hillsborough’s building services department targeted them for notices of violation because their properties included capacity to pump from a pond or shallow well for irrigation purposes. 

Such auxiliary water systems constitute potential for cross connection contamination of the potable water supply, the county has alleged.   Satisfying the county’s unproved allegations initially can cost the homeowner $700 or more.

Hillsborough’s mandated use of backflow preventer valves has been supported by a county ordinance dating back to 1997 and last revised in 2003. It calls for citing homeowners first with a 48-hour notice requiring they engage a certified plumber to prove no cross connection exists.  Upon compliance, a second notice of violation requires property owners then to pay plumbers to install the valves within 21 days.   And following installation, homeowners are ordered to pay for annual inspection of the devices at rates set by the plumbers.  Water customers who do not comply can lose their potable water connection, be fined up to $500 and spend up to 60 days in jail.   

The county ordinance stems from a regulation written with the help of the American Water Works Association and enacted by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) which, in turn, cites a Florida Statute as its enabling authority.

The Legal Questions
All of it, however, is being questioned with increasing vigor as residents scrutinize the rules, particularly so as officials have been unresponsive. 

Marilyn Balkany, longtime Sun City Center resident and activist, for example, points to the county ordinance and citation concept which demands homeowners with auxiliary watering systems prove no cross connection  exists and then requires the expensive backflow valve installation to deal with a contamination proved not to exist.

“It (opposition to the questionable logic) is just a matter of common sense,” she asserted this week. Balkany said she’s directed an inquiry to Brian Blair, an at-large county commissioner, but has not spoken with him.

Another resident of the retirement community, Dave Brown, calls into question both the DEP rule and the state statute on which the department founds its authority. Rule 62-555.360 (2) of Florida’s Administrative Code as well as  Chapter 403.086(8), Florida Statutes, he said, discuss potable water protections in terms of contamination from reclaimed water sources.   Yet, in South Hillsborough, he added, contaminating the county water supply with cross connection from reclaimed water lines is not possible.  Have the wrong codes been utilized to support backflow valve enforcement, he has asked.   

Brown also has suggested that the Hillsborough enforcement effort may be a violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees equal protections to all citizens under the law.  “Forcing me to install a backflow preventer valve may protect my neighbor from contamination of public water,” Brown noted, “but if he is not forced also to install the valve, could my protection be compromised?”    

Questionable Encounters
Not all questions deal with enabling law, however. Many relate to negative first hand experiences.  Danny Hill, owner of an Apollo Beach home, told The Observer his house located in a neighborhood on the east side of the AB development was targeted because irrigation water was drawn from a nearby freshwater pond.

Hill, who is handicapped and resides part of his time on the Florida East Coast, knew nothing of the county backflow ordinance.  However, he was cited with the first notice of violation, he said.   Subsequently, he paid to have the backflow valve installed on the street side of the home.    

Having targeted Hill’s house, he said, the county building services department inspector then began checking  other homes in the neighborhood for signs of irrigating from the same pond.   When he announced his intent to  neighboring property owners who resisted, “he told them they could blame me” for their predicament, Hill said.   The building services approach served only to generate resentment along the street directed at him, he added. “What kind of government is that?”

Jerry Tootle, a Hill neighbor, resisted the heavy-handed modus operandi of the county personnel.  He was cited with both the 48-hour notice to prove no cross connection and with the 21-day mandate to install the valve, he said.  But, rather then capitulate to the demands, he removed the pump which had pulled irrigating water from the pond and capped the irrigation water line.

When the county inspector returned to ascertain that no cross connection could exist, he then demanded that a pipe on an adjoining property be removed, Tootle said.  “I told him I wasn’t touching that pipe; it wasn’t on my property.”

Tootle, a former automated systems designer for such mass communications giants as Verizon, said he considers the Hillsborough enforcement effort “opportunistic,” based on looking for opportunities to issue violation notices. In Hillsborough County, he added, the enforcement effort has deviated from the state’s intent to preserve a safe water supply and is operating outside guidelines established to attain that goal.
“The county doesn’t pay me to protect, for example, my electronics,” Tootle noted rhetorically, “why should I pay to protect their public water.”

In Sun City Center, another homeowner had a similarly unpleasant encounter with county personnel in connection with the backflow valve. Wendell Spencer, whose home also borders a lake, contacted the county department trying to locate a permit number related to a plumbing job done several years ago.  In the course of the conversation, Spencer, who was not aware of the backflow valve ordinance, acknowledged his secondary watering system for irrigating his landscaping. 

He was not cited for any violation, he said, but the next day the plumber who did the original job appeared at the Spencer home, although no one in the family had  contacted him.  The local plumber wanted $695 to install a backflow valve and additional money to provide a camouflaging artificial rock, Spencer said. 

However, the retiree and former organic produce farmer, refused to fall in line.  “I don’t want the thing out there” in the yard, he told The Observer. “I will go desert,” replacing the manicured lawn with gravel, “before I’ll go along with this,” he said. Spencer said to date he has not been cited by the county with either notice of violation.

He is, he added, maintaining close contact with his neighbors around the lake, alert for any sign county inspectors have fanned out, seeking more homeowners around the lake rim to target with notices of violation. 

And, Gerry Stesiak, also of SCC, succinctly told The Observer “I have one question.  Where is the empirical data that would verify the need/mandate for such a device” as the backflow preventer valve?   County officials “cannot tell me I have to spend somewhere in the range of $700 because they think someone may have gotten a flu bug” due to water contamination when there is nothing to support it, Stesiak asserted.  “Show me the proof!” 

As complaints of various types have circulated,  Brown, a SCC resident widely known for the careful research which led to revised official flood hazard zone maps, has examined backflow issues.   His investigation has included efforts to demonstrate structural and other flaws inherent in the backflow valves.   To date, county commissioners have declined to allow Brown to give them, either together or separately, information related to the valve weaknesses. 

However, Brown has continued to raise issues about the entire enforcement effort.  If the objective actually is protection of a safe public water supply, why not require  every residential and commercial property owner in the county to install the backflow valve, he asked.  “After all,” he added, “it is quite possible to contaminate the system with the microbes in a garden hose.”  Yet another vulnerability in the public water network is related to fire hydrants situated throughout the county, he said. 

Then, there’s the manner in which the backflow issues are handled in other counties.   Within the 67 counties of  the state, at  least 21 jurisdictions bear the full or partial cost of the valve installation for their customers, according to a list provided by the University of Florida.  And, in those jurisdictions that pass along charges to their water customers, the dollar amount is considerably less than the figures being charged by Hillsborough area plumbers, according to information given The Observer by neighboring cities.  

Some Officials Respond
While many public officials have not responded to inquiries from The Observer or from concerned residents,  three elected leaders have offered opinions on at least some of the issues.  

County Commissioner Rose Ferlita, whose district includes Apollo Beach and Ruskin, told The Observer this week she sees the entire backflow matter as a public safety issue.  “And public safety,” she emphasized, “trumps the inconvenience” experienced by individual homeowners.  

Commissioner Al Higginbotham, whose fourth district represents Sun City Center, said his office is open to more discussion of the issues surrounding the backflow valve controversy. The office has received more than 30 communications from constituents on the subject, he said this week.

Higginbotham also stopped Brown from giving a full demonstration of the problems he sees as inherent in the valve during a public meeting in Balm early last week.  He blocked the demonstration based on both security and safety concerns, the commissioner added this week.  

State Representative Seth McKeel, a former Lakeland city commissioner who has had personal experience with use of the backflow preventer there, also said this week he is continuing to talk with officials about Hillsborough ordinance problems.  McKeel has noted in the past that the local ordinance is more “onerous” than the law passed in neighboring Polk County.   

The representative, whose district includes part of Sun City Center, told The Observer he’s also been in touch with Southwest Florida Water Management District leaders because a mandated valve that forces residents to use municipal potable water for irrigation impacts area water management objectives.   

Lastly, an encouraging sign of pending change that may positively affect Hillsborough County citizens came in an email this week to Brown from Assistant County Attorney Sheri Murphy.  Murphy verified that revisions to the county ordinance governing backflow valves now are under review.




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