Don’t Let Your Municipality be the Next Corpus Christi Backflow Crisis

It’s been a few months since backflow prevention was headlining in the news as the cause of the drinking water crisis in Corpus Christi, Texas. It’s rare that the public thinks much about the importance of clean tap water, let alone how interconnected and fragile their water supply is.  Municipal water suppliers don’t get much thanks but can get a lot of flack when things go wrong. Buzz surrounding the Corpus Christi backflow crisis can help your own city better understand the importance of backflow prevention and to be prepared if you are ever faced with such an emergency.

Using Corpus Christi as an Example

Regardless of how much Indulin AA-86 backflowed into Corpus Christi’s water supply by Ergon Asphalt and Emulsions, the fact that the city took so long to report it, was problematic.  The city’s backflow prevention regulations, testing, and awareness were lacking. Over a week went by after the Indulin spill before the city reacted with a water usage ban. Citizens ended up with intestinal illnesses and skin rashes when they didn’t have to. The city did not have a solid plan in place to spread the word within its own administration or the population of their city.

Additionally, the city was not on top of it’s backflow prevention measures. The city indeed has a Backflow Prevention Program within its Water Department. A power point presentation on the city’s website shows off these codes in layman’s language, however; months later it is still unclear if the location in question had a backflow prevention device in place or not. Codes and programs do not ensure polluted water enters drinking water – hardware in place and the attention to detail (often in the form of software) to monitor it do.

Corpus Christi has been updating their backflow prevention zoning code in response to the crisis. They are surely working harder to make sure more devices are in place as well. Talk with the leadership in your municipality about the Corpus Christi backflow crisis and ask for your own zoning code to reviewed. Do you have devices in place where they need to be? Do you have the software to monitor them? Do you have a plan in place to react to a crisis?

How Tokay Software Can Help You Prevent Drinking Water Pollution Crises

Tokay Software has been in the backflow prevention business for over thirty years with thousands of municipal clients. We help municipal water suppliers better understand who is using their water, how much water these customers use and monitor backflow prevention devices. We offer personalized, on-site trainings for our software users as well as easy access to our technical support and data management services. We can also review and analyze our clients’ data. Since we’ve been doing this for thirty years, we can find issues and help normalize and clean up clients’  databases quickly.

This is not the relationship we have with most of our clients

Corpus Christi has been a Tokay Software customer in the past but does not regularly renew their technical support subscription. We are unaware if they are currently using our software or not. This is not the relationship we have with most of our clients  – over 90% of our software users utilize our annual support agreement for software updates, tech support and data management support. Any sort of viable department program needs to be active and supported, backflow prevention zoning and programs included.

Connect with Tokay Software to see how we can personalize your backflow prevention data management. We make it easier to manage devices, customers and data while protecting your municipality’s water assets.