The year 2020 has been an interesting one. It will not go down as one of my favorite years by any stretch of the imagination. In some ways it has scared me and made me question my faith in human nature. In my sixty-one plus years on this earth, I have never seen my county so polarized or divided. It seems at times up is down and down is up. COVID-19 has had an effect on every person in the United States and in truth, our world. Hopefully 2021 will be a better year moving forward. One of my biggest regrets is that I did not invest my money in Plexiglas stock.

As with any situation, either good or bad, we should look at the successes and the failures and learn from them. I think every employer and institution, as we have moved through the pandemic, has had to look at their business model. Change is a hard thing in many cases and something most people resist at first. But the change may be not only necessary, but also something that makes their job, and in some cases, their life easier. Working from home is one example. Even when the pandemic ends, I wonder how many people will continue to work from home, with both the blessing and the support of their employers? Is it possible that people working from home can be as productive or even more productive than when they reported to the company office? What will that mean to landlords and all the other related businesses that provide services to the traditional office settings? The rental fees companies save is the life blood of many of the building owners and developers. The disruption of the economy also has a ripple effect to the surrounding restaurants and other vendors that once supplied the products and services needed in the traditional office settings. Things have changed, and some of those changes will become permanent.

Change is the one thing we can count on in life. For every action there is a reaction. Perhaps the COVID-19 situation will help people understand how fragile many of our systems are. How important it is that we admit problems do exist and that solutions to those problems need to be found. We must understand that fixing the problem and identifying where and how the problem occurred is far more important than deciding who is at fault or to blame for the problem itself. There are many smart people in this world working to make life better and to solve our current crisis. Two separate vaccine makers are now at the stage where they can begin pushing for approval of their product. In less than nine months they have created a lifesaving vaccine for an illness that did not exist until late 2019. Their work will hopefully allow us to return to some sense of normal in the first or second quarter of 2021. When smart people work together, it is amazing what we can do.

The cross-connection industry is also full of very smart people. We can do great things. We also protect the health of the nation by ensuring people have clean, safe drinking water. Our industry needs to come together and work on some common goals that will make sure our most important goal is reached. That is the protection of the water supply. We need to look at lessons learned, problems discovered, solutions found, and the successes and failures we have experienced in 2020. Then we need to look to 2021 and work on areas of improvement in our systems and look to bring our professional organizations together to brainstorm for solutions to the challenges we face.

All of the stakeholders that are critical to backflow protection and cross-connection control need to put the issues of the past in their rear-view mirror and start moving in the same direction, with the same purpose in mind — public safety and health. That means the plumbing industry and the water industry need to develop a mutual respect for the important work both groups do in making sure clean, safe drinking water is provided from its source to its last free flowing tap. We need to understand that ensuring backflow preventers are installed where they are needed, and also, if the system requires it, that the backflow preventer is a testable assembly which is then tested and maintained as needed. We also need to have in place the installation requirements and the trained inspectors to ensure assemblies are accessible and placed in the correct locations.

Those of us doing training and certification need to be more concerned with the value of our programs and the quality of the testers we are producing. That is far more important than working to create a monopoly for our group in a specific jurisdiction. Doing things like that simply fractures our industry, confuses our consumers, and provides the people and groups that oppose testing mandates the ammunition they need to fight against requirements for installing or testing backflow prevention protection. We need to be clear eyed and keep our minds open to look for opportunities to improve people’s lives and protect our systems. In short, we need to work together for the common good.

The year 2020 will be a year we will try to forget. The year 2021 will no doubt get off to a rocky start. Let us try to take the lessons learned to work together and make the world a safer and better place for all people.

About the Author

Sean is a 40 year member of the United Association Local 524 Scranton Pa. He has worked in all phases of the plumbing and mechanical industry and is a licensed master plumber. Sean is a Past President of the American Society of Sanitary Engineering. Sean is also the member of the ASSE Cross-Connection Control, Technical Committee. Sean is employed by IAPMO as the Vice President of Operations for the IAPMO Backflow Prevention Institute.