Dover City Council urges moratorium on non-return valve requirements

DOVER—The Utility Committee, which meets as part of the Council Committee of the Whole, introduced a resolution Tuesday that would place a one-year moratorium on any program that requires the installation of check valves.

Non-return valves are devices that prevent contaminated water from entering the water supply. This is called a cross-connection.

The Delaware Department of Public Health’s January 2021 regulations encouraged installation of the preventers statewide, but only those deemed high risk were required. Sprinkler systems, for example, emit water that would be considered contaminated and that the city does not want in its drinking water supply.

Other high risk facilities include (but are not limited to) car washes, dry cleaners, laboratories, medical facilities, mortuaries and wastewater treatment plants, as per the Dover Code.

“The original intent of the backflow prevention devices that were put in place was single-feed water supplies, which fed sprinkler systems in buildings,” said Mayor Robin R. Christiansen, citing his experience in firefighting. “The pipe that was used in sprinkler systems, and is still used today, was called planned pipe. It had a silicone lining in the pipe so that it would not rust, as did oil-filled pipes.”

According to a letter filed in the minutes by Councilman Fred Neil in February 2021, the City of Dover was directed to develop and implement a cross-connection monitoring program no later than February 2024.

Now, after that date, the City Council said it has begun hearing from real estate agents who claim the city is telling businesses with “no real risk” of backflow to upgrade backflow prevention devices at a cost to them of thousands of dollars. According to Dover spokeswoman Kay Sass, these locations are typically low-risk, and it is up to municipalities to determine the requirements for the systems in those situations.

House Bill 453, which was defeated by the House of Representatives earlier this year, would have removed low-risk properties from the cross-connection regulations.

“To require anyone to install backflow preventers on systems other than sprinkler systems that are required by (National Fire Protection Association) regulations is really a serious oversight unless the drinking water system is not only feeding the potable and usable water in a household, but also, for example, a closed heating system or something like that. It has been shown that the household backflow preventers are usually not really effective because in our case our water is being cleaned and treated,” the mayor added.

The purpose of the year-long moratorium is to give Dover City Council time to consider alternatives. Currently, the city provides public education on cross-connect control and backflow prevention to low-risk residential customers instead of requiring them to install backflow prevention.