Water purveyor
The utility or organization that owns, operates, and supplies a public drinking water system and is responsible for the quality of water it delivers.
A water purveyor is the entity that supplies potable water to customers through a distribution system: a municipal utility, a water district, a private water company, or a similar organization. The purveyor treats or sources the water, maintains the mains and service connections, and delivers water to the property line or meter. Along with that role comes a legal and practical responsibility to protect the quality of the water inside its distribution system.
In cross-connection control, the purveyor is usually the driving authority. Because it cannot control what customers connect inside their buildings, it protects the public system by requiring containment assemblies at services that present a hazard, keeping an inventory of those assemblies, setting testing requirements, and receiving test reports. The purveyor also typically decides hazard classifications and can deny or discontinue service to a property that refuses to install or maintain required protection.
Testers and property owners interact with the purveyor constantly, even when they do not realize it. Test reports are usually filed with the purveyor, notification letters about due dates come from it, and questions about which assembly a property needs are ultimately its call. Testers should learn each local purveyor's reporting process and forms, and owners should keep the purveyor informed when property use changes, since that can change the required level of protection.
Related terms
| Cross-connection control program | The organized system of surveys, device requirements, testing, and recordkeeping through which a water purveyor or authority manages backflow risks. |
| Containment vs. isolation | Two complementary protection strategies: containment protects the public main at the service connection, while isolation protects users inside the building at each hazard. |
| Annual testing | The periodic field testing of backflow prevention assemblies, typically annual where required, set by the water authority, that verifies each assembly still works. |
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