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County’s Cross Connection Ordinance Draws More Fire
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Sep 19, 2007 - 2:51:35 PM

By Melody Jameson
melody@observernews.net
Hillsborough’s hot potato backflow control ordinance is burning not only its violators but also its enforcers.
 
County personnel continue to cite unwitting South County citizens for not complying with the cross connection control regulation – and in the process openly violate it themselves.

Meanwhile, the county is inching toward a revision of the contested and controversial regulation on a couple of fronts – reviewing similar ordinances and considering discounted cost for some citizens.

Citations Out of Order?
Frank Burton, a resident in Sun City Center’s St. Andrews section is among the most recent homeowners to receive citations from a county inspector fielded by Robert DiCecco, Hillsborough’s cross connection control coordinator.   The reason, Burton said, is that his property has a shallow well and small pump used for landscape irrigation.
Burton said that on September 5 his wife noticed a county vehicle parked near his home, its occupant observing the property.  A short time later, the inspector stuffed two citations into his front door, he added. The first gave him 48 hours to provide certification of no cross connection between the county water lines and the irrigation system, the second required response/installation in 21 working days of a backflow valve to prevent any contamination of the public water supply from the certified non-existent cross connection.
The citations were back dated by a month, Burton noted, both of them bearing an August 8, 2007, date of issue.
The erroneous dating, however, is not the only problem with the citations, pointed out Dave Brown, another SCC resident who has spearheaded efforts aimed at encouraging county commissioners to find another approach to protection of potable water.  The citations violate at least two sections of the county’s ordinance.
 DiCecco’s citations demanding installation of backflow valves within 21 days contradict the ordinance he has said he enforces. The ordinance actually provides more than four times that timeframe for compliance.  Section 4.3.2 of the ordinance states: “No customer shall receive less than ninety (90) days to complete the installation and initial testing of a mandatory Backflow Prevention Assembly.”  
In addition, the ordinance, in section 4.3.1, deals with notification of customers requiring backflow preventers. Notices are to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, thereby establishing an official date of receipt.  DiCecco’s team consistently has placed citations in doors.  No South County homeowner known to have been cited has received that notice by mail, Brown said.
 Burton said he complied with the demands of the citations and paid for installation of a backflow valve, adding he felt threatened by mention of an additional $150 fine.       
The retiree also told The Observer that at least 10 of his immediate neighbors have been cited for ordinance violations.
Residents in the Symphony Isles section of Apollo Beach took another approach when homeowners there began to be cited by the dozens in August.  They invited DiCecco to a meeting of their homeowners’ association board and negotiated at least one concession with him, said Jeff Wortner, a resident who took the lead on the issue.  
In the course of their conversation with the county representative, DiCecco agreed to extend the initial 48-hour timeframe for compliance with the first citation to one week, Wortner said.  And although DiCecco later tried to renege on the agreement during the meeting, Wortner added, the group held him to his word and memorialized the agreement in writing.        
But, another resident evaded the first citation altogether, Wortner said, when he asserted that he had been present on the property when his home was being built and knew that no cross connection between his irrigation system and the public water system could exist.  DiCecco then agreed “as peoples’ jaws dropped” that the homeowner would not have to comply with the first citation, Wortner added.
Concerned about stated penalties for non-compliance which could include cut-off of county water to their families, homeowners in the gated community on Tampa Bay’s eastern shore subsequently negotiated a lower price for volume installation of valves on their properties.  Their installations by a single plumber are running between $325.00 and $375.00 each for either three-quarter or one- inch valves, Wortner added.   Homeowners in other communities forced to install the valves have faced charges in the $600 to $800 range.
Violations of the county ordinance by county personnel enforcing it and the selective enforcement of its current provisions are not the only problems, Brown noted.   Hillsborough’s approach to prevention of cross connection contamination of the public water system also apparently does not meet long-established guidelines issued by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In clear language, Chapter 6 in the EPA’s Cross Connection Control Manual calls for conducting “public informative meetings that define the proposed…program, review the local …ordinance and answer all questions that may arise…”  The federal agency’s directions also call for public service announcements about the “pending cross-connection control program” in local media and go on to list types of training specified for “employees who administer the program.”       
The county has not complied with these directions, Brown said.  “If they had conducted the kind of public information effort in connection with backflow prevention that they did with flood hazard zone mapping and had responded to questions as forthrightly, the situation might be very different today,” he added.  
The Observer has endeavored for more than a week to speak with DiCecco about the various issues raised by residents. However, the cross connection coordinator could not be reached by telephone and did not respond to messages.

Revisions in the Works?  
As cited residents now look for their best way out, county commissioners are beginning to seek answers.  During a September 6 meeting of the board, the six officials present voted unanimously to examine whether a discount could be extended to elderly and low income citizens to help defray the expense of compliance with the backflow regulation. Commissioners noted as a possible model the discount in annual trash collection charges available to seniors who apply for it.  
Simultaneously, an assistant county attorney has been asked to assess how other jurisdictions have drafted and implemented their cross connection control ordinances.  During an August 21 meeting, the Cross Connection, Backflow and Back-Siphonage Control Board, a county advisory group, voted to collect the information as part of  reconsidering the Hillsborough ordinance.
Sheri Murphy, a member of the county attorney’s staff who serves as liaison to the board, was assigned the task, according the office of Al Higginbotham, one of two commissioners representing South Hillsborough.   
The advisory group, which usually meets on a quarterly basis, also set a special meeting for September 25. Murphy’s report is expected at that session.  
As various approaches to quelling the controversy are underway, Brown is expanding his campaign for “a more reliable means” of meeting federal and state mandates to protect public water supplies.  The Sun City Center resident, who regularly demonstrates vulnerability of the above-ground backflow valves to tampering and theft, recently asserted to county officials that the nation’s Homeland Security Act forbids any actions that could facilitate contamination of the water supply with, for example, biotoxins.  “Hillsborough County’s mandated valve could facilitate just such a calamity,” he said, adding  “federal law trumps a county ordinance.”

© Melody G. Jameson 2007


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