Council off the mark on backflow program

On Aug. 19, four members of the City Council, namely Stephen Snedden, Carrie Logan, John O’Hara and John Reuter, voted to approve a very invasive and punitive ordinance.

In part, it states that an employee of the city, in his judgment, and as often as he wants, in his judgment, enter your home and determine if, in his judgment, a possibility of a cross-connection or backflow exists.

His judgment then will be the criteria that will decide if you are in need of an expensive backflow device, which is so prone to failure, that it will have to be inspected at least annually at a cost of $50 to $60 per inspection. If you call your council member that voted for this, they will likely tell you that a Department of Environmental Quality man told them that if not approved, the city would likely lose its water certification, and homes and businesses would not be able to get financing. So afraid were they, that they even voted to suspend the rules requiring second and third readings, and immediately put it into law.

The DEQ man also could only name three of the several hundred water purveyors in the state that have a backflow program, and none which have this kind of invasive ordinance. There has been no mandate for cities to do this, as it has been pending for 22 years, and no recorded evidence that a problem caused by the lack of this kind of residential protection ever existed.

If you have ever dealt with the Public Works Department, the “judgment” part should be enough to put you into cardiac arrest. Can you say Nazi Germany years ago before the current staff was born? Are the city residents ready for the knock on the door, with a freshly scrubbed, smiling face looking down at you?

Write or call your mayor and council members to get this stopped before it becomes entrenched.

FRED DARNELL

Sandpoint