Water backflow preventers useless, a waste of money; Manatee County should ax requirement

Wasting taxpayers' money!

Manatee County requires backflow preventers and testing. The claim is that it will prevent "unintentional contamination of the water supply."

Oddly, this is only the case in the county; town water supplied doesn't have these devices.

They claim this is necessary because we have a ground irrigation system. Since those systems are a completely separate supply system, not connected to the drinking water supply (use reclaimed water), the assertion is mute.

We are not in a "flood zone" designated region. There is no possible way for water from a pond or river to enter the county-provided drinking water system, as those have no pressure.

No one in our development has a well. Swimming pools have nothing to do with any possible backflow; all the pressure is into the pool (unidirectional), not feeding into the drinking water system.

The entire requirement is in fact bogus. I call it the "plumber and civil servant full employment law."

Since the county provides pressurized water and no home has any pressurized system, if the county pressure were to drop to zero, there could not be any backflow because there would be no pressure in the system. These metering systems are a waste of money, serve no discernible purpose and the law should be scrapped.

Some very clever meter salesman really did a job on us all; I wonder how many politicians benefited?

Dr. A.H. Krieg

Parrish

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Water backflow preventers useless, a waste of money; Manatee County should ax requirement ."