Cross Connection Control

You Can Affect the Quality of the Water You Drink!

Many public drinking water systems are contaminated each year by pollutants or contaminants that backflow into the water system through unprotected cross-connections. Identifying and eliminating or protecting cross connections is a matter of public health! Brigham City Corporation has a Cross Connection Control program in place which helps protect our customers from potentially harmful cross connections. Part of our Cross Connection Control program is public awareness. Our hope is that by reading this, you, our valued customer will become educated and aware of illegal cross connections along with their adverse health effects.

What Is a Cross-Connection?

A cross connection is a direct or indirect connection between the public drinking water system and anything else, including another water supply that can allow pollutants or contaminants to back flow into the public drinking water system.

How to Protect Your Home Drinking Water

We all know pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, along with strong cleaning chemicals are toxic and possibly fatal if ingested. What you may not know is that you could put these chemicals into your drinking water accidentally.

Normally, water flows to your home from the public drinking water system. However, under certain conditions, water can actually flow in a reverse direction. This is known as backflow. This can be caused by back pressure, from a boiler or a non potable lawn irrigation system (example, using water from an irrigation ditch). It may be a back-siphonage that is caused when there is a loss of pressure in the water distribution system caused by a high withdrawal of water. Examples are as in a shutdown of the water main lines or plumbing system, or a high water demand, as in the use of fire hydrants. This reduction of water pressure can create a vacuum in the piping, causing a garden hose or other water outlet to siphon dirty or contaminated water back into the public water system. This backflow can cause health problems if ingested.

Brigham City inspects, documents, and runs annual tests on all the city backflow assemblies; however, making sure the water in your home is protected and safe should be of great importance to you and your family. To help protect your drinking water from backflow, remember these simple tips:

Keep the end of all your hoses clear from any contaminations.
Don't submerge hoses in buckets, pools, tubs, sinks, ponds, etc.
Don't use lawn or garden spray attachments without a backflow prevention device or assembly.
Don't connect drain lines from water softeners or other treatment systems directly into the sewer drains.
Don't use a hose to unplug a toilet or blocked sewer line, etc.
Install hose bib type vacuum breakers on all threaded faucets in your home. Some homes may already be equipped with built-in vacuum breakers; all newer washing machines already have one built in.
Install approved backflow prevention assemblies on all underground lawn irrigation systems.