2024 Newsletter

Cross-Connection Control

The Illinois Environmental Protection agency requires Cross-Connection Control programs in order to protect communities from disasters. The installation of backflow prevention devices, also known as cross-connection control devices can eliminate this hazard.

You have the right to safe drinking water. Your water district has joined state and federal agencies to protect the quality of the water which enters your home.

These regulatory safeguards mean nothing if a simply thing like cross-connection occurs and allows pollution, such as dirty water from bathtubs, washing machines, swimming pools, or contaminated water containing deadly chemicals and pesticides to enter the plumbing system in your home.

Simply put, a cross-connection is a link or channel which connects a source of pollution or contamination to a source of drinking water.

Properly operated and protected, the water distribution system keeps contaminants out and the water flowing through your pipes safe to drink. However, drops in pressure, whether caused by an accident or any brief interruption of service, can reverse the flow and result in contaminated materials flowing into the water system and out through the tap.

Consumers can protect their private potable water supplies by seeing that hoses are never left with the open end submerged, as in a swimming pool, laundry tub, or connected to a garden chemical sprayer. Water in bathtubs and lavatories should not rise above faucet level, as the water pipes could become siphons in case of a pressure drop.

Illinois law permits a public water supply to disconnect a customer who does not take proper precautions to prevent or remove cross-connection.

Thermal Expansion Control

Thermal expansion of heated water may occur wherever potable water is heated in a closed system (when the potable water is isolated from the public water supply by a one-way valve, such as a pressure reducing valve, backflow prevention valve, check valve, etc.).

Potable Water Expansion Tanks are designed to absorb thermal expansion and to maintain a balanced pressure throughout the potable water supply system. They are used to prevent plumbing system and/or water heater damage and unnecessary relief valve discharge caused by excessive pressure from thermal expansion.

If you do not have, or do not know if you have, a thermal expansion unit, please contact your plumber.

Maximum Contaminate Levels

Maximum Contaminate Levels “MCLs” are set at very stringent levels. To understand the possible health effects described for many regulated constituents, a person would have to drink 2 liters of water every day at the MCL level, for a lifetime, to have a one-in-a-million chance of having described health effect. (IEPA/LWD-Annual Drinking Water Quality report 2006).

J.U.L.I.E's National Number 811

You have a crucial role in helping protect our water system. Damage to any underground water line can cause a disruption of service for you and many other district customers.

Any person/company involved in any excavating (digging, planting a tree, installing a fence, etc.) in the State of Illinois is required by law to first call J.U.L.I.E., “Joint Utility Location Information for Excavators”, at least 48 hours (excluding weekends and holidays), but not more than 14 calendar days before you dig or drill.

Be prepared to tell the J.U.L.I.E. operator the exact location of the proposed excavation site (including the county, city or township name, section & ¼ section numbers, and the nearest cross street), as well as the type of work you will be doing and when you plan to start. The J.U.L.I.E. operator will then notify all the utilities, having lines in the area of the proposed excavation site, to go out and mark their lines.

It takes the cooperation of all, to insure this system works.

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