The Backflow Tester Who Guards Tenbury's Drinking Water

A day on the route. Renee Ormond works for the water utility in the town of Tenbury. Her title is cross-connection control specialist. Most people at the utility call her the backflow tester. She starts at seven with a route list on a tablet. Her first stop is a car wash. Soap and wax lines run close to the drinking water line there, which is the kind of site her job exists to check.

A cross-connection is any point where a drinking water pipe could meet another liquid. A hose left in a bucket of soapy water is one example, and a pipe that feeds a boiler is another. Water normally pushes out toward the building, so nothing moves backward, yet pressure in the main can fall. A big fire, a broken pipe, or a hydrant flush can pull pressure down fast. When that happens, the liquid on the other side can be drawn in, and the assembly is the barrier that prevents it.

Renee closes two valves on the assembly and hooks up her test kit. She reads the gauge and watches the needle. A check valve in good condition holds a steady pressure difference, while a worn one drifts. She writes the readings on a form, resets the valves, and moves to the next stop. On a normal day she reaches eight or nine sites. Restaurants, schools, and car washes fill most of her list. Two of the readings today fail, so she sends the owners a letter naming the part that must be replaced and the date the retest is due. At the end of the day she files the passing reports with the state.

Getting into the work. Renee finished high school and took a job reading meters for the utility. She trained on the job with a licensed tester for a year. Her state then required a training course that runs about a week, followed by a written exam and a hands-on exam on live assemblies. The license must be renewed on a set schedule, and every test kit must be checked for accuracy on a schedule too. Many testers also hold a state water distribution operator license, which comes in classes tied to the size of the system.

Pay and outlook. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not report pay for backflow testers on their own, so this profile does not give a figure for the role. A closely related licensed job is water and wastewater treatment plant operator. Those workers earned a median of $60,020 per year in May 2025. The lowest tenth earned less than $39,110 and the highest tenth earned more than $91,060. EPA estimates that roughly one third of the water workforce is eligible to retire within the next decade, and in 2016 only about 10 percent of water workers were 24 or younger, which is one reason utilities are hiring. Testing work is one route into the water sector among several. Others include certificate programs at community colleges, four-year degrees in civil and environmental engineering, and graduate study in fields such as public health.

Suppose the town of Tenbury keeps a list of every backflow assembly that must be tested each year. Use the numbers in each question to answer it.

1. Name two tasks Renee does at a testing stop.
2. In your own words, explain what a cross-connection is.
3. Tenbury has 640 assemblies on its yearly testing list, and Renee tests 8 assemblies on an average workday. How many workdays does the full list take?
4. Last year 576 of Tenbury's 640 assemblies passed on the first test. What percent passed on the first test?
5. Tenbury recorded 45 failed tests one year and 27 failed tests the next year. What was the percent decrease in failed tests?
6. Tenbury requires every business to have its assembly tested each year. Name one benefit of that rule for the town's water customers.
7. Name one cost of that same rule for a small business owner.