It’s been over a year since a backflow incident and the resulting water use ban caused a citywide panic and temporarily shut down a number of city businesses. City leaders are still dealing with the far-reaching effects of the event. Corpus Christi City Council recently approved a $78,000 contract with Brycer LLC to handle what they say are gaps in the city’s cross-connection program compliance reporting system meant to keep the potable water supply safe. “I think what we’ve done is a step forward that the city needed to do and hopefully we will avoid anything like that from happening again,” said City Councilwoman Carolyn Vaughn.

Up until recently, the city’s database for backflow prevention inspections and testing was incomplete and in some cases contained the wrong addresses and ownership information. These problems caused many of the city’s delinquent notices to be sent to the wrong person or location. To improve that system, the management of the system will now go to Brycer LLC. This decision signaled yet another move by the city government to turn over city compliance to a third party. Last year, the city hired a group of local plumbing contractors to do work at over 4,000 businesses and homes that are not in compliance with adopted plumbing codes. So far, according to the city departments they have achieved compliance from about 1,000 businesses. The city will continue to seek compliance from approximately 3,500 homeowners who to date have not followed the city regulations or rules for the installation or testing of existing backflow preventers.

As you may remember in late 2016, many city residents woke up to news that they could no longer use their water. The City sent out the notice after they became aware of a possible chemical leak at a local asphalt plant. The incident has led to widespread reform of the city’s backflow preventer inspection program. Investigations revealed the city did not actively enforce its backflow testing rules, and the city later confirmed more than 4,000 businesses and homes were not in compliance. The City has been working since that time to correct these issues and restore the public faith in the quality of their water supply.