Backflow Prevention

Every day, the Village of Skokie proudly supplies an average of 8.5 million gallons of water to its citizens; water that exceeds the minimum quality requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Before the water is pumped to your home or business, it has gone through careful treatment and numerous tests to ensure its quality.

Congress established the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in 1974 to protect human health from contaminants in drinking water and to prevent contamination of existing groundwater supplies. This act and its amendments (1986 and 1996) require many actions to protect drinking water and its sources.

One of these actions is the installation and maintenance of an approved backflow prevention assembly at the water service connection whenever a potential hazard is determined to exist in a customer's system. Without proper protection devices, cross connections can occur. The following are frequently asked questions regarding the Village of Skokie's program to prevent backflow contamination of the water supply.

Read more Information on Backflow (PDF).