This article first appeared in the August 2013 issue of Drinking Water & Backflow Prevention Magazine.

My wife and I built a new home in Scranton, Pa. nine years ago. Located in a new development in the city’s Tripp Park section, it is a ranch style home situated on a quiet cul-de-sac with several other homes. Carol and I moved in nine years ago in early summer and spent the first year landscaping and making our new house a home. My wife and I look at things differently. As an example, I would have been happy if we blacktopped the lawn and painted it green. I would have looked at it as a way to eliminate maintenance while she made sure that our home, in addition to a beautiful lawn, is literally surrounded by shaped mulch areas with roses, bushes, trees, and other plant life.

I still remember the day that as the builder was finishing up the house, Carol and I stopped by to check the progress. The painter has just finished putting the white primer coat on the sheetrock and I mentioned as we walked around that we should just leave the walls as they were. I said the primer white color looked fine. Carol disagreed and if looks could kill, the stare she gave me would have put me in the grave. In the end, every room in the house was painted and every color in the rainbow was used before she was finished. My bride is also one of those people who insist on yard art. Our lawn has a flagpole, statues, fountains, and much more. We also have seasonal themes which include lights, flags, and of course wreaths for the front door. We have different ones for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, Summer, and Spring time.

During the first full spring season we spent in the house eight years ago my wife hung her brand-new spring wreath on our front door. The next morning as I opened the door to get my morning paper, I was startled by a bird flying off the door wreath. Within that first day, it had built a nest right at the top of the wreath. Being the caveman that I am, I called for my wife to come look at the nest before I knocked it off the door and threw the nest in the garbage. Carol informed me that I was not going to do any such thing. It would be cruel to the bird and also would bring bad luck to our new home. We discussed this issue and as is usual in our twenty-seven-year marriage I found myself on the losing side. The bird nest would stay.

We talked with our neighbors, the paperboy, the UPS man, the mailman, my son’s friends, and everyone else who might use to the front door and asked them to use the backdoor until the birds left. For the next two months we stayed away from the bird nest as much as possible. After a little while four small birds could be seen in the nest and once they learn to fly they left the nest. When they were gone, we cleaned the bird poop and other material off our front door and my wife removed the empty nest from the wreath to use in a decorating project elsewhere. She removed the spring wreath from the door to make way for summer decorations. The birds were gone, and the seasons were changing.

The next spring rolled around, and my wife again brought out the spring wreath and was preparing to put it on the front door. I mentioned the bird nest from the year before and asked if the wreath was a good idea. Carol said to me that the nest was a fluke and that it would probably never happen again. That being said within hours of her hanging the wreath on the door another nest had been built and the cycle started again. At the end of that spring, we decided that we would leave the nest on the wreath when we removed it. That way the following spring the birds would not come back because they would not use the old nest. As we started our third spring it turned out we were correct, when we hung the wreath back up with the old nest, it remained empty. The problem was that within hours a bird had built a new nest right next to the old one and the cycle continued for another spring. The next spring, we again hung the wreath on the door, this time with two empty nests. We knew this time there was no room left on the top of the wreath so the birds would leave us alone. Again, the birds rose to the challenge and built a nest in the side of the wreath and settled in for the next few months.

I would like to say that we finally outsmarted the birds and managed to go a spring with a wreath on the door and no bird nest but that didn’t happen. The only way to avoid the nest is to not hang the wreath on the door. My stubborn Irish heritage will not allow me to remove the wreath and let the birds win. In a way although I am sure it is not the same bird each year, the birds have become a little like family. Red headed stepchildren no doubt, but family nonetheless.

As I was cleaning the bird poop off my front door this year, I was thinking about a backflow conference I had recently attended. Some of it reminded me of the bird situation. Albert Einstein famously said that the definition of the word Insanity was “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

That describes perfectly my situation with my front door and the bird nest. It also describes a lot of what went on with this conference. What I saw in many cases was the same thing I have seen time and time again within the cross-connection industry. The same people saying the same things over and over again. The same attitude that has poisoned and polarized much of the cross-connection industry for years. The program, product, or certification I am involved with is the only one that should be accepted. Once an individual or an organization makes that decision it can have a chilling effect on innovation and ideas. Changes are coming to the cross-connection control and backflow industry, that is the reality of the situation and it cannot be stopped. There needs to be more of a middle ground where discussion is not only allowed but is encouraged. People on all sides of the issue need to remove the blinders, to look at things with an open mind and to allow others to present different programs, different ideas to the industry wherever possible.

When I signed up to attend the conference, I knew I would encounter the old guard mentality from some of the attendees. I knew that like the birds who insist on building a nest and pooping on my front door every spring I would be looked at like the red headed stepchild to some at the conference. But like the birds who return to my home every spring, the cross-connection and backflow industry is family and many people from all sides of the industry are working hard to open the avenues of communication and make sure the discussion continues and expands. And like the birds I will look forward to the next conference and work hard to continue the important efforts so many of us are engaged in.

The work we do and the protection we toil to provide is too critical to allow politics or personalities to derail our efforts to improve products, services, and education to the industry and the public. The industry is talking and that is a good thing. We need to look for opportunities for progress and when they present themselves, embrace them, and move forward.