Most people have the expectation that when they get a drink of water, the water is safe.
The most recently adopted Uniform Plumbing Code has guidelines to provide additional safeguards. To assure our water is safe, the City of Ames and ISU are working together to use a common backflow preventer program to protect public water supplies from contamination. The first priority is to identify areas with the highest risk of backflow contamination such as buildings with research involving chemicals. Our first areas of concentration were Vet Med, VMRI, Waste Chemical, Applied Science, and Campus Service's nursery. Building Maintenance handled the backflow preventer installation at all of these locations except for Vet Med.