the regular meeting of the water resources committee please come to order it is wednesday october nineteenth and it's a little after nine in the morning i'd like to welcome everybody i am glad to spice this committee and i'll be introducing the members in just a moment but before we start i'd like to ask everyone if you would please check to make sure that your cell phones so when mo do so that we don't have any ex excitement here i'll take my own thank you very much and this morning we have does mr carol good morning good morning we chair a white good morning came from the administration we have with us dave taylor the director of water supply at mining and we have jen our deputy corporation counsel we have our wonderful staff we have kim whelan brink our helping us with this bill today where i'd like to members we only have one item on our agenda today but it's very important and it will take some some work i would like to morning thank you for bringing this item back to the committee appreciate the opportunity to speak on it please let me initiate this testimony of the testimony by emitting that i am not a plumber and have professed no real knowledge of the mechanics of this issue when the water director says this is a health and safety concern i believe him however having worked in the area of unintended consequences that arise out of well intentioned government actions for decades the realtors association of malory wishes to state its concerns with the proposal as it stands and this is just an amendment that would mitigate those concerns the way we understand this proposal whenever a property owner seeks a building permit for any purpose whether as to do with water related issues or not they would also be required to install backflow protection system to the water system only property this could add as much as five hundred dollars to the plumbing permit and a subsequent plumbing inspection which is not clear to a non plumber layman like myself is whether this is a new addition to the residential water system will have to be inspected regularly to ensure its function is functioning properly if it does that would add another whole layer of hassle for the homeowner we believe that this added requirement will be a serious disincentive to the average residential property owner to seek require building permits we have already had where we have a problem with home and homeowners sidestepping the building permit process let's just say that our building permit process is  well known for its efficiency for many property owners there is already a philosophy that less than waltman with the county the better r police that you should be an address or really has more to do with commercial property own own or operate a properties or multifamily properties than private single family residences so we like to propose a simple compromise please consider exempting single family residence from this proposal memon i mean this requirement commercially operated properties have the capacity to deal with and more likely to be the cause of the issues that the proposals addressing with that compromise who would be able to support this proposal model thank you mr dearly own members any need for good morning morning everybody excuse me i am not a plumber either but i must say that i recognize tap water when it's flowing and where is it when it's not years ago just money was given at this microphone person within our community whose water pipe was cut we were talking about no water available to our house at ten thirty at night after the news scary i called the water department and they answered was apparently somebody up sorry to have had to do that but anyway could they come in the morning which would have left me with no water protection between ten thirty at night and whatever they might be coming the following day not acceptable so i told the gentleman in the  that i really felt as though somebody ought to come up and i would say reaching the emergency number in the phone book yes so they sent somebody up a young man who had already gone down and check not like there was water all over the place or any of the neighbors walking the dog would have called up and said you've got a problem here so the person got out of his truck and said the word that all of us who had worked on the upcountry o advisory committee about water problems that anything between the meter in the heater is on your property and your dime i decided not to do anything about it about the person who was trespassing and causing stress to say the least and the endangerment out of all of that and that young man walked over and put his hand on the grass and sure enough it was dry and he walked over to the meter and then followed the piping from the meter up to the house and said oh my god your meter has been caught by your pipe has been cut pipe not a pipe so whoever had that certainly knew how to maneuver that system like i say plumber i'm not but i recognize when water is and isn't there and it was a member of the past of the county council that brought that up when i was at this meter at this microphone and i asked was a chair that the pipe had been cut and i hadn't brought that up i had tried to follow through with the water director in the deputy water director at that time and didn't seem to make an impression at the sort of behavior had gone on and when  was here for a meeting this year that we're wrapping up now in sixteen i was pleased to see that at a previous council member had flown back to maui to bring up the fact that the water system had slows problems and that when the water director said as he had done that he felt the water stuff should be handled for permits by the people who do parameter and not the water people and i went back and got a hold of that excuse me that piece where he had said that and he had said that that was on july thirteenth of twenty sixteen so right here we heard that the problem is bigger than this being addressed right now so when i took a look at this call to the meaning i went back and read  seventh floor bless the people who made that documentation available again the sixteen forty and the sixteen one fifty six documents read those and went over them indeed this should not pa as it's written now there is sluice of things that are going to come back to bite including lawsuits i'm afraid so please don't let this one go by the way it is thank you very much members and you need to  on is anyone wishing to testify waiting ok thank you ladies members there appears to be no one in the gallery i don't see anybody else rushing up and no one in the neighboring offices so without objections i would like to close public testimony no objection so ordered thank you very much members today members we have one item on our agenda and it is w r twenty you may recall  seventh consul meeting i requested the committee report sixteen dash one five six recommending for approval a reply its proposed bill entitled a bill for an ordinance amending title fourteen article one called relating to cross connection and back flow control and water for fire service be referred back to this committee for further discussion the purpose of the revised proposed bill is to require consumers and owners of real property to install backflow preventer on properties connected to the department's water system and to generally prohibit connections that could contaminate the department's potable water system members this is a very important but a very complex bill because i received last minute concerns from the committee and members of the public as well as of  people closer to me than that and our october seventh meeting when this was a first reading i decided it was i think we all remember it was a very busy council meeting we had all the big agenda lots of testifiers i wanted to give this the full discussion so it was my suggestion to bring it back to committee and i thank you for that support i felt it was best we have further discussion because of the concerns that  were raised and today i'd like to hear about any amendments that you might want to consider to prepare a revised bill for our next meeting and this is why we posted no legislative action because we had the bill we discussed it we passed it out and then when it got out there people had time to think about it and said oh i don't know what about this and what about that and this is why i thought better we bring it back and give it time and discuss possible amendments before we try to take it out of committee again and i want to thank you very much for your initial action on it it was ok but we hadn't heard some of these concerns and now that we have i think we should talk about them so with that being said mr taylor do you have any opening remarks in can you go into greater detail about the process change i think in general we we as a department don't have any suggestions for change we feel that the bill as written is the appropriate way to move forward we recognize there are people concerned about cost especially for single family homes i don't have an easy answer for that other than to say that everything in a in a building code article code plumbing code whether it be a fire receptacles or hurricane straps etc are costs that provide some measure of safety as this is not something that we've made up i have been looking for any major utility that doesn't have this requirement and i so far haven't really found one it is industry standard as it has been in our industry for decades it was britain and even the rules here in l a county for a long time it is kind of lost in the translation to ordinances rather than rules and the other counties have them a w w a recommends them even as a kid i remember moaning the lawn in our neighborhood when i was mowing lawns for work and mowing lawns around these things i don't know what it was at the time but i clearly remember even the houses built in the late seventy's early eighty's all the single family houses had these so we feel it is industry standard kind of like hurricane straps g f i receptacles it is something in codes all across the country because it's needed and we don't feel comfortable just just because it had some cost that we don't think they should be done we recognize that balance we certainly recognize a difficult job that the council has where everyone saying hey this is for safety we don't find any sort of  logical argument that we've seen across the country that says this is something that should be left out ok members that are going to open the discussion let you folks if you have any questions  probably don't even new residences coming in we would look for some reason to have a concern a swimming pool a automated irrigation system something so to say a house that just had internal plumbing would not have a concern and would not trigger this even under this bill it would have to be something that gave it a concern but again as a couple of those standard things that would is a a outside irrigation system or a swimming pool both would create that concern worry you would trigger a mess but a house that just had you know showers and sinks and things like that single family home would not trigger this  no this this is written i was think trying to think of an analogy i think a lot of you are familiar with the county sign ordinance and i promise i'll connect this in a second that the planning department administrates and if you look at the county sign ordinance  hear the planning department talk about it drive around why look who are anywhere else and see lots of places that are not in compliance but the planning department has never gone down the street and started citing people because they don't have the staff they don't have the you know it's not a priority this would allow us if we wish to go house to house to house and do that we don't have the staff we don't have the intention even when the board had these rules the department wasn't doing that so the would allow forcing retrofits if there was a concern from a practical standpoint it's going to be a lot like the sign ordinance is that i just don't see any realistic way that we're going to go house to house to house and make people do something else a concern comes up section that you suggest doesn't says that it doesn't this bill is not triggered if you don't have a soya pool or automatic irrigation system on page five  g section g one as the department shall require the installation of backflow preventer as during its review of any building permit application and during any other review by the department i'm sorry i i misspoke i was speaking of the fact is we don't see the first building permit for a lot we don't we don't we don't review that it doesn't come to us from d s a so though it allows us to go to any property we don't even see the first residential building permit on any property so we won't from a practical standpoint review those things but again and thank you for the opportunity to clarify this does allow us to require for anyone we wouldn't from a practical standpoint do that unless there was a concern we do we just don't intend to go back and try to like i said go door to door looking for these things but if we chose to it does as you correctly state first house there is no limitations at all i think that's a hole in the law we need to look at but so you you don't even have a chance to sign off or require anything in the first building permit the first residential property on a on a does does not get we don't see those you do if you're a country right for a country that's a big question there that we were just discussing which seems quite odd to say the least yeah and so i was trying to figure out why i conceived the intent i mean the purpose of this and it looks like it's been around was never caught a fight in our county code so that's what we're trying to do and i was trying to figure out consumer owner we're going to require all consumers an owners  to do this and you stated that you haven't seen in the utilities not use it so i was just i mean i was looking more big companies a water service measure of sorts so i mean i assume they are also tied into this rule along with our single family and the you know everyday sure they all encompassed in this to the big yes that's correct and essentially so we have our utility lines and any connection to that would be the customer whether that customer is a huge customer or a single family customer that's correct oh but they're not they're not customers but they are feeding us the source so it's a sort of i mean add to that so those those companies they're private purveyors which have nothing to do with you know our department going to monitor them we have nothing no jurisdiction over them so say for those subdivisions if a building permit were to be applied for and they get a service by those private water providers typically those building permits does not come to our department people so we would not have the opportunity to make any types of requirements because they are private water system so those guys completely don't ever connect any word on the line ever ever ever so no there's no  i think the answer your question is is that is correct if you have a private water company there we don't share pipes with them they are completely separate system there are water does not go to them and their water does not come to us the when a line breaks or when somebody runs into a fire hydrant or any even those are big fire there's a huge amount of flow coming out of one point more than usual that can basically suck the back the water through the system because it's such a high volume more than normal and actually suck it back from your house or business so if you've got that see a swimming pool connected and there's birds that have been you know in the pool and diseases and things and down the street somebody that runs into a fire hydrant there's a big fire a line breaks that water from your swimming pool can come back through the pipe into our system and whatever's in your swimming pool is now in the bottled water system that's what these are designed to prevent basically a double stop so that once water gets to your side of the meter it cannot come back that's that's really what the mechanics of what this is and that's the concern of what happens it's when there's either a line break  a fire hydrant breaks or there's a large fire ok that even raises more red flags for me so currently these backflow devices or whatever they're called  are installed i mean and people some people are doing it but this is just going to require mandatory you have to do it so i mean i'm just after you just said what you said are we in you know are we at risk since we're only now we're starting to implement this and codified it so i've missed how many permits and things have been built prior to today that have what you're explaining swimming  in outside or geisha i mean you name it many yeah and exactly what the chronology of history is this i don't know i know the rules seem to go back a long time they don't seem to have been forced consistently i can tell you that this building that we're in right now just a few years ago i think it was when the improvements were being done on the ninth floor i believe it i was in with the water department the time but my recollection is the water department refused that building permit even though it didn't have any plumbing because there was no backflow preventer on this building and so that was just to do the imagine i think this wonder that of ours and ministration i believe that the mayor was told look you're building permit is stopped until as part of your internal tenet improvement you install a backflow preventer on this entire building somehow when this building was built it was not included exactly why that is i don't know and we run into that often so anything new being built seems to be cau there seems to be this gap were things were built that don't have these we've been trying to catch up as people come in for building permits and without this actual ordinance we've been advised by corporation counsel that we should really have an ordinance to do this and not just say look it's a requirement of the department to get your building permit so it was really those cases you're talking about that led to us being here today that we don't have any real teeth to make for example you know the county building do this and in that case i think back to that day i think the department just sort of held the building permit hostage and i recall sort of right some could happen you don't know the i mean we don't have it or do we test water regularly obviously we're not testing everybody's service every day and we have  conditions but there are no existing because of the meter box and the with a lot of us are constructed there is a some level of protection oh ok that's good but you're not going to catch anything until you don't even look at the first building the permit so you're not going to catch anything  till this an add on or something occurs at aid welding because you folks don't even check the first go around so that kind of thirds me off a lot  thank you ms cochran tearaway it is trying frantically to get my attention if you don't mind mr coat give him a second shot and we'll get to you i guess my concern share is that we have a situation where if you want to build a new residence with both a pool and automatic irrigation system which are the two systems that the director is saying cause the potential for back flow so you can you could build that without ever going through the water department your first residence but if you want to add a bathroom and that pushes you over the fixture count even though it's internal and he says it's not going to any impact you've got to go put in a backflow preventer so i'm i'm now kind of feeling like i don't want to vote for this until people who are potentially risking safety to the system are i don't direct i mean i'm kind of flabbergasted that we're sitting here with what i can only look at as kind of a half baked bill if if it's critical that we do this then i would suggest that it's critical that we do it right and not leave big holes for and every new home to be to be built to go without a backflow preventer if it's a true safety issue and if it's not critical to have everyone brought into it then it's not critical for anybody to be put in that position so agreed and in fact we've had this discussion internally just so you know it's it's an internal procedure that we're not seeing from development services this first building permit same time we have a good relationship with them if this bill was passed one of the first things we would do is say when you see india say even your first building permit first structure on a property that has exterior landscaping irrigation systems swimming pool will make a list of things we want to see those you know backflow preventer is going to be required because there's this bill that's something that i think internally administratively once a bill is passed it's pretty easy to have the people in d s a flag for those things and let us know ok but that still doesn't answer the concern that i have that if you just sat in the bathroom this is still good you're going to be forced to do back to prevent or even though you're not doing something that is a risky you know there's putting the system at risk we would have to write a that's the kind of thing where the director signs to staff you know under these conditions when are requiring that kind of things so that's i wouldn't necessarily see every one of those but there would be direction to staff when these issues are coming up they were resolving only giving up blanket pass to people in these conditions that kind of thing so you mentioned if this bill passes that you'll provide them a list of the types of things you're suggesting that if somebody applies for a building permit for just a bathroom that is not to be triggered if if there is evidence under review of the building permit that these conditions exist and you know there might be that this is limited it is not stated it's just the exemption that mr me but she talked about so this is i'm i'm glad we're talking about this i sort of thought we were going to talk about this last time maybe we rushed through a little too quickly this is the challenge we have we don't want to be holding up the residential building permit process by seeing every one of them we recognize that that's just going to slow things down more at the same time we need some teeth that if there's a problem to get in there and there is some judgment we struggled with this to try to come up with some certain way that without seeing everything we catch what we want to catch and we have been unable to come up with any  way to balance those and this is our best balance of these concerns you bring up but we don't i don't disagree with your concerns and we've tried to resolve this best we can but again we don't want to clog up the whole system by seeing every  because he is now diversifying dying's it tell us his concerns and you know i'm really happy we're having this discussion because this discussion began like i said after we passed it out of committee and filled it was really important that we have it and so let's go for it we are considering amendments today well they may be considering we don't pass it maybe consider a passage it's up to us after we have a full discussion go ahead  can we not just list those four things that you were saying saying if these people are coming in for any kind of permit that includes any one of these four things then we can require that the this whole thing right now the way it reads somebody comes in with a deck they want to put in a deck and you have the option of actually kind of required to unless you're exempt they're required to get a  w preventer that's the way i read it now if i'm reading it wrong let me know but i would say we can put the exe in there said the four things that this list that you were going to give the d s put that in the law and say if these if you're going to do any one of these things then you need to do the back for member couch if if that when for residential only i think i think we could absolutely support that one of the issues we have with non plumbing based permits is when there are ten improvements in shopping malls for example the tenant comes in and they're just doing non plumbing improvements we have a whole shopping mall that doesn't have one so that's sort of where this whole thing came from and i was really our biggest problem but if for residential we just listed those specific things i think we can  and then move move on it right but the other question i have you said you're administrate of rules have no teeth council said you're administratively rules have no teeth there are not administrative rules what there was was the share i think everybody's dumbfounded lists in this that you don't have some sort of look at all the permits i understand you don't want to you don't want to hold up the process and i understand that but especially with the fixture unit count may be on your list that you give the d s a say flag if it exceeds the fifth fixture unit count but mr can maybe give a little history of i mean about how far this goes back and what happens because i had to obviously before my time but it might have gone back to back maybe back into the mid eighty's maybe and from what i understand again it was just a mechanism to not flood the department with a bunch of permits that were going to delay for people so i think that was the main main reason why it was done that way right but you're giving them a lift i mean you they already have kind of a list of something to look for and i would assume that fixture unit count might be another one that you would want to add to that list so it's again from what i understand anything besides the first dwelling building permit on an empty property it does come to us pulls on as additions those types of things non non golding's ok so let me let me see if i can clarify this empty lot somebody you know mr taylor wants to build on  his why do country estates why he wants a house a pool and irrigation system first permit the does the water department see that because it has a pool and an  believe we see the building that went for the pool but not there a geisha in system i don't know that you need a building permit for an irrigation system you kind of the you need a plumbing permit i believe yes that's correct currently the plumbing permits do not get routed to our department for approval plumbing permits street plumbing permits without ongoing is for water right ok all right that answers that line of questioning  how much does this device cost somebody somebody keeps throwing around five hundred dollars is that what it costs for something like this will lessen is to me a budget to answer for the initial installation numbers i'm hearing maybe two a couple hundred maybe for the yearly maintenance and the yearly testing maybe seventy five to a little over one hundred maybe but that includes the device and installation from a certified plumber to a couple hundred bucks but i'm really glad to hear about a quote on the annual testing requirement because that was my husband's big concern he said what are you doing he will have to pay this here every year so i'm hearing that we tried to get in touch with them this morning to see if we could get a better quote on the annual inspection but they were not available well and that's the other part is the annual inspection right yeah we all have stuff that we're supposed to and newly inspect but i'm sure we push it sometimes what happens if first of all people don't understand that there's an annual inspection i didn't know that you needed one and i don't know that our condo complex knows th annual inspection what happens just what are the some of the things that they're inspecting for i would think a five year inspection or something like that but to require an annual inspection is that absolutely we have to go back and look at that i don't i know the commercial ones are an annual inspection whether or not what are the normal failure modes of this thing and how often it needs an inspection we have to look back at that chair that would be one thing that if they could give us a number and maybe we can say every three years or something like that just to put that burden yet another burden on the residents is kind of you know we have to be very very careful we have taxes we have fees we have you know we're just piling more and more on the residence so if anything we can do to mitigate some of that would be appreciated but i'm all for the list to find out what the actual periodic inspection really could be so those kind of will definitely have that available for the next made ok thank you check this kerrville or let me give you a word in here and then we'll make another round i appreciate that don't get those guys are owning you never have a chance so you talk about regular inspections  inspection it's very rare that every year everyone gets a consumer confident rip confidence report in the summer and i think if you look back at those many years there there's no residents that does not have the backflow preventer so we check our system that means basically out of the distribution system it means we're checking at fire hydrants we're checking at certain places and we're not instantaneous time for let's say fifteen minutes we weren't testing during those fifteen minutes we got washed out we would of course never know that so the testing procedures are really built to test for the reliable consistency of the water we're producing our testing procedures are not built to find if something if there was a back flow failure and something was contaminated from that that would just be sort of a spot occurrence that would almost additional five to six hundred dollars to install a floor preventer is and yet it's very rare for us to be non compliant star safe drinking water is that what i'm hearing we so you're saying that it's a rarity for us to  happening on private property from coming back into our system and the right testing programs not really built to look for that i've joined understand the necessity for all residential homeowners to have the backflow preventer installed so the necessity or the the reason would be if as a community we're concerned that of the thirty six thousand customers they could do something on their property that could cause contaminated water to come back into our system and go to their neighbors it's the only way to protect against that occurring again as with that being there it would also include inspections for other cross connections that the homeowner m basically once there's a backflow preventer what the homeowner does on their side after that is not really the concern of the department because whatever's happening within their property doesn't come back and affect our system installed and maybe they have an authorized some unauthorized connections so if if a private property owner is somehow building their plumbing system not in compliance with the plumbing code on their side that's really a public works development services mr asian plumbing section issue about how they look for that and check for that power issue is we want to make sure that doesn't come back into the public water system whatever plumbing issues they have but we but yes we do not get into the details of how people palm their private property and whether or not so for example whether or not they're swimming pool could contaminate verso we're staying out of that but we don't want their swimming pool to if you might know if you will remember how many times we put in redundant language because roups it because in forstmann does not do so we go over there in the conditions we are going to start enforcing all of these walls and we're going to quote do this would be a disaster because there would be so flooded with permits nobody could do something within thirty days it would be a real real you mr chernoff you know you raise a question that's been in the back of my mind and that is yes we want to protect our water system it's really important and i know why they brought this to us and we all agree that we want to safeguard the water system but we really don't want to we don't want to overload poor days who is already struggling to try to get or watching movies done we don't want to give him a whole bunch of building permits to look at and that will make that situation even worse so what you raise i think is really important mr taylor any comments you we agree with you know we don't disagree with the concerns raised by the council  and talk about environmental management's previous grease trap methodology there was a time there was no grease traps there was really no grease type ordinance so what they did is they said within two years or three years every place it needs a grease trap will have one and so i think they came up with you know five hundred or eight hundred of them a law was passed by by the council and certified letters went out to every single person who needed to retrofit it said you have you know over two years or there was a follow up letter i don't remember the details but it was a very orchestrated attempt to say we will catch every single one of these and there is a current staffing that does this and you know it cost a lot of money took a lot of time not all the businesses survive that someone out of business because they couldn't afford we didn't think something analogous to that was practical though that would be my sort of wish if we could do that to identify you know however many thousands of these there are identifying which ones pass an ordinance send certified letters give people two years we just don't think it's practical to do that so we thought the best way to do it is sort of what we're doing now is as people come in and we we catch more and more and as time goes by more and more people have these without the sort of draconian way of saying look there's a drop dead date everybody has to have one so if the council does support this concept but would rather have us do what i call analogous to the grease traps about saying we're doing this and within five years everyone will have one you know we could we could do that it would just take more resources and take more of a sort of a stronger ordinance very analogous  grease trap bill was done but again we thought that the best way to handle this was to just have some teeth that as people come in for building permits to just keep catching up so every year there's less and less problem and that was sort of the middle ground of doing nothing verses trying to do everything in a very short time period and a high level of resources so that's why we ended up with  grease traps were not required of residential properties and so it was a much much smaller number and you could make the case that we should have had grease traps on private residences or maybe some private residences that had a lot of you know a lot of propensity to dump grease down there and down the drain but that said my my addition to what mr couch mentioned was that if we're going to do this on a you know as permits come in basis i think that's probably the only way that it can be done with you know with the existing resources then i would hope that we would require that if somebody comes in if somebody has a pool and an irrigation system currently and they come in and  ut in a permit for a new bathroom that they would be subject to put in a backflow preventer and if this you know if the if the issue is safety of our system then it should be applied to people who currently have pools and things without back for programmers so that's that's the only change i would make to mr coach's list but we concur and and if it's not clear that that is exactly the intention of what we're trying to do maybe we didn't make that clear enough but we don't disagree with a word you say ok this congress i think you and i completely agree with mr waits on discussion here and yet it's not clear what he's saying i think we all of us have been trying to say or it's not written as for our layman's eyes trying to read these things that you folks just take for granted is understood to me is not clear so i don't see that in the general public to understand any of this either and so yeah i am still very concerned about existing properties that have all these potential risks to have to have potential contamination into our system that's been occurring for many many many many years and now you just want to get this through to address new things that come on line yay gree where we're where but you know to me i think there's i can drive down friend street and tell you which homes have so many pools which ones ever a geisha right now i know are you know and all the department's job to know and so if it's not clear i'd like to put this type of verbiage in here you know i think the top for irrigation the dual system if there's a well water tank on say swimming pool then you know i'm reading here you're saying places that have used that water industrial fluid gas or any other type of substances so is that like gas as in gas stations liquid gas not gas gas in any commercial establishment would would have one so all of the things you just mentioned would be covered under  this that's just under definition of cross connection so that verbiage is seen these things have that potential this is why we need this this cross means any actual or potential connection and then it lists you know these systems that include this type of arrangements have this potential and these cross connections are to be considered so you know but that i don't know it's just a lot of words in the air that they figure it could be a lot clearer but i really think that one lupul that we opened up t discussion with regard to that first initial permit and not having any oversight on that one to me i know d s is flag and they kind of have this in the back of their mind to keep an eye out but i think it's really key that we have the department that's in charge of seeing that clearly be a part of you know that initial you know go ahead on the first permit so that i think is part of uncomfortable news for me anyways i think  you know that's a typical way from today's meeting i will definitely be trying to get in contact with the before our next meeting and if possible have them here oh yeah when we discussed this again ok very good ok yeah some change some work s be sufficient i guess those those are again in line they'll lose their burden of the grown so i mean they do their job which is to prevent backflow but they're not tested you know they could field any point because nobody monitors them they just they're in the ground just sitting there so they are effective in preventing back flow but again nobody knows if ten years from now they'll stop working versus is above ground assemblies where you know if they get their annual testing they're making sure that it's working properly the valves are closing and that's why they're above room so that they can be tested part of the reason one of the other reasons is there's a valve the dumps water when there's a baffle condition so we don't want that sitting in a man who underground work that water could be sucked back up into the system but them that's another reason in addition that the single the single flow the single flop backflow preventer is just right a little pipe it's basically a little hinge with metal and it just flaps there's a metal spring on it it's all contained it's buried just having seen these in treatment plants when you when you're not buried maybe you get ten years till they rust then they stop working and they fail open meaning they just rust open because they're always under pressure and they never close ever again so they're working except they don't close but there's no way to know they don't close unless you can see it and there's a little actually you can see when it's closed but they basically just rust open and so you kind of know from a practical standpoint if you're going to bury want to do your foundation i would bet that very few of them after ten years actually close i have never seen a spring work that law that isn't maintained some how are they and of the foundation are they in their water near there somewhere you know they are buried somewhere oh it's not i thought it was part of the water meter sure everybody does it if it is that important if it is not that important then slowly putting it in as you suggest is probably the better way because you have to check valves i just have a hard time you know of if we do the your list i think we're good as expected with what mr white's chair white said so if we can get that narrowed down and i'm fine with that to say we do want to protect system that you are the department of public works that determines the installer for the backflow prevention device is a certified need guess that's my question but that wouldn't come from your department right that would be coming from meeting whatever code it is for the building props and maybe the plumbing inspectors to take a look at the initial test on these our bills it states like the department will be water department because in some a lot of these are just as the department i mean we know who we're talking about a lot of times in our definitions you know so forth the department will be noted as the water department director will be director of water department in our so i'm not sure if that's needs to be here but because i was looking at the section about permits and it was number one permit by you know by department building  was public works public works could be determining this on your behalf because you are already notified them to please flag these certain items and you know i mean in those definitions department is department of water supply so from fourteen zero one to fourteen twelve i believe are fourteen point thirteen that's all the water departments code so  twelve or thirteen water department ok so it stated but in that section i mean either we have depart your department review initial building permits or pretty people who do oversee it which is g s a public or to determine at that time because you folks are only getting the retro i mean that after the fact whatever out on after the first initial permit scrutiny i think we're talking about just having them flog it and sending it to us not making a determination and i think that the language that mr couch suggested it would still be within our purview we you know if we put this in with all the changes or anything how how would the customers be notified is it going to be when they come in for a building permit then they're going to  you may want to send out a letter to everybody saying hey look if you've got these you're going to need a backflow preventer you know are you going to notify the customizers is going to be a surprise to them when they want to come in to us to get a permit i think there's a lot of surprises when people come in for permits a lot of people don't realize and so you know it's a constant effort to tell people we've had working sessions with professionals architects and contractors to try to say you know here's the issues that each of the departments have we've organized these a number of times because there are so many various requirements from different departments that you may not think you're triggering so we have never come up with any one weight to say if you're doing x y z you know here's all the requirements that apply i think there's too many cases i don't have  any efficient way to do what you're suggesting we could do it for this one thing but then there's you know a hundred other things that wouldn't be included or you know how hard it is for us to get the word out about  but i have to say that i think that council has been working really hard on transparency and i am happy many times i turn on my facebook which i love and there it is you know what we've talked about today and then we have our county web site and so we're doing i think a better job of getting the word out but it's always hard it's always difficult and of course tear can always help us with this re minutes or you know something but we really need to talk a lot more about that particularly when we make precise list of those things and what the proper names are yeah i think we have some ideas of what they are but let's firm them up rather than putting them in in stone today looks like we have all you know a lot of work to do still on this fifty percent about so the purpose of that is if someone were to come in and apply for a building permit and we make this type of requirement of course it takes some time to get to know to get it installed and tested and what not so there may be times when they need the building permit right away  thank you and thank you chair for bringing this back because like you i heard from a lot of folks that said wait a minute and i appreciate the department's concern about the system and it's very important that we keep the system cl tabulation and i realize too that it's more towards commercial is is where the big concern is because you know there's quite a few families out there that have maybe a water sprinkler system it's more towards the water sprinkler system that i don't know if you've got check valves these are newer usually newer places so i want to make sure that we're able to make sure we have some compassion for those folks that are trying to make ends meet and we keep piling on more and more stuff so just keep that in your head when we are because we all have to deal with that every manager thank you mr coach you know in the past few months into we've been talking about this it's been very interesting at home because my husband always asked me a lot of questions about this and you know once answers and since then it's funny when we were out in near an establishment he said see that thing over there on the right that's the backflow preventer and it's very interesting to me because i never noticed that they were there anywhere so when you're out driving around the like when you go to mcdonald's you see this biggest collection of pipes outside and they're kind of been a structure in there and i've seen them very tiny and i've seen them huge depending on what kind of a building you're looking at i don't know what the county building one looks like maybe we should go take a look if you have time for members you might want to go take a look and see what we're talking about you think it's out here so anywhere it is you know noticeable if it's there you can see it and that's the difference between having the backflow preventer which is above ground and you can go take a look at because the big discussion in our house was about the double check balance and why do we need this in addition to that so i really appreciate the clarification today i don't see any more questions than the members but what a department anything else you'd like to and that's fine i think the counsel for the committee for getting into the details on this i realize this isn't the usual thing for counsel getting into plumbing details this is the kind of thing just so you know though i know we spend a lot of time on issues the public is concerned about our country water the pot holes are these things people have every day when we go to conferences when we read our magazines what we see is every time there's some sort of disaster in some communities that don't even make the news the first thing in my mind is could that happen here and what i feel responsible or is that just something that happens you can't plan for and this is the kind of thing that is not a big deal until it's a really big deal it's the kind of thing that i sort of lose sleep at night is like am i doing a good enough job and i just letting it because we've always gone i appreciate the counsel working with us on this because although it's you know there's this up and down history of using these things and although i wish i could wave a magic wand or just have one every where tomorrow is long as we're moving forward at least i can sleep at night and i think we're doing the right thing so i hope you will see that this isn't just something we're making up this is something that our industry is really concerned about and we're not just trying to cause trouble so i really appreciate your your help with members if there is no further discussion i'm prepared to make my recommendation to defer with no objections no objections ok and i want to tell you that we i want to of you for agreeing to attend a special meeting on november twenty second at one thirty which is unusual we usually do morning so this is an afternoon meeting and we will try to have this ready so they we can post our changes and along with the agenda if we can make that schedule then we'll do it right after that but again i want to thank all of you for your input and i want to thank the public for giving us the opportunity and coming to testify so that we can make this the best bill it can be if we finally pass it out of here anything mr taylor is their concern before i close this meeting go ahead the meeting of the sixteenth of november is cancelled and so we rescheduled for november twenty second and november twenty second ok all right members without any further business to