Public backflow records
Public backflow records, organized and source-traceable
Backflow prevention assemblies are tracked by the water utility or the building department that requires them. Depending on the jurisdiction, that tracking is a public record: the device, the address it serves, the date it was last tested, and sometimes the date the next test falls due. This page sets out what those records contain, which agencies release them, and how to check any one of them at the agency that issued it.
§01 Anatomy
Four things a backflow record can carry
Almost every cross-connection control program keeps the first two. The third is common. The fourth is the one that decides whether a file is a work list or a filing cabinet, and plenty of programs do not keep it at all.
- The assemblypresent everywhere seen
-
Serial or asset number, device type, manufacturer, model and line size. Reduced
pressure and pressure vacuum breaker assemblies appear as codes such as
RPandPVB, sized in inches. - The service locationpresent everywhere seen
- The address the assembly protects. Sometimes one parsed street field, sometimes house number, prefix, street, suffix and unit split across six columns. Occasionally a premises or location name alongside it.
- The last testpresent in most
- The date of the most recent test on file. Worth checking before trusting: in one extract this column clustered on a handful of values across devices with completely different installation dates, which is what an export timestamp looks like rather than a test history.
- The compliance statethe deciding field
- A next-test-due date, an overdue flag, or a status the agency maintains itself. Where it exists, the agency has already made the determination and it does not have to be inferred. Where it does not, no amount of processing creates it.
§02 A record
What one looks like, with the address withheld
Two real rows from records released in June 2026, one from each of two jurisdictions. Every value is as the agency supplied it except the service address, which is withheld here because publishing it would identify a specific property on a public page.
| Field | Lubbock, Texas | Columbus, Ohio |
|---|---|---|
| Service address | Withheld here | Withheld here |
| Device type | — | RP |
| Manufacturer | AMES |
not supplied |
| Model | 2000SS |
not supplied |
| Size | 3" |
0.75 |
| Last test | 2025-04-23 |
2024-06-12 |
| Next test due | 2026-04-30 |
2025-06-08 |
| Agency status | Overdue |
Past Due |
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
Note the two columns that matter: the agency set the status, not us. The Lubbock row was
overdue against a due date the city computed; the Columbus row carried the city's own
Past Due value. Both extracts were released at no charge in June 2026 and
are described in the availability index.
§03 Sources
Where public backflow records come from
Two channels, with very different properties. Open data is instant, free and can vanish without notice. A records request is slow, sometimes priced, and produces a file the agency has actually looked at.
Published open data
New York City publishes the relevant records continuously. Backflow obligations surface there as summonses and hearing outcomes rather than as a device inventory, so the record describes a cited building rather than an assembly.
-
OATH hearings case status,
dataset
jz4z-kudi— the summons, its charge description and its disposition. Verified 17 July 2026. -
DOB ECB violations,
dataset
6bgk-3dad— the building-department violation ledger. -
DOB safety violations,
dataset
855j-jady— used for the gas-piping compilation rather than backflow, and included here because it is the same retrieval path.
Records requests to a utility
Device-level records almost always sit with the water utility running the cross-connection control program, and have to be asked for. Outcomes vary far more than the statutes suggest.
- Lubbock, Texas — released at no charge, 23 June 2026, with a maintained overdue status field.
- Columbus, Ohio — released at no charge, 17 June 2026, with a test-due date and status.
- Gainesville, Florida — released at no charge, 23 June 2026, commercial devices only at the utility's request.
- Clearwater, Florida — released at no charge, 18 June 2026, but holding no compliance state.
§04 Organizing
What organizing a raw extract involves
An agency export is not a working file. It arrives with one address spread over six columns, duplicate devices at a single premises, and a status column whose meaning is only defined in the covering note. The steps below are the same ones described in full on the method page.
- Stamp the source. Dataset or request identifier, the agency, and the date and time the file was retrieved. This is written into the delivered file, not just kept internally.
- Normalize without inventing. Addresses reassembled, dates parsed to one format, device codes left exactly as the agency wrote them. Where a value is absent it stays absent; nothing is filled in by inference.
- Keep the agency's determination. Where the agency maintains an overdue or past-due field, that field is the compliance state. It is not recomputed from dates, because the agency's interval rules are the ones that count.
- Drop what should not be worked. Residential and any protected-status accounts, anything the agency asked to be excluded, and rows carrying no usable evidence.
- Check before writing. A fixed set of release checks runs last: schema present, no rows without evidence, identifier coverage above threshold, no duplicate keys, every source timestamped. A failed hard check stops the build and produces no file.
- Record what was done. A manifest with row counts, the checks and their measured values, and a checksum for every file, so a delivered file can be told apart from an edited copy.
§05 The qualification
A public compliance signal is not a confirmed job
This is the sentence that matters most on the page. An overdue record means an agency's system showed a device past its interval on the date the file was pulled. It does not mean work is available, unassigned, funded or wanted.
- The test may already have been done and not yet posted. Agency systems lag their own field activity, sometimes by weeks.
- Another contractor may already hold the account. Nothing in a public record says who tests a building, and most programs do not publish it.
- The property may have changed hands, changed use, or removed the assembly entirely.
- An overdue flag reflects the agency's interval rule, not a judgement about risk, enforcement or urgency.
- Some jurisdictions publish a device inventory with no compliance state at all. In those, an apparent due date is an artifact of processing, not a record.
What that means in practice
Records of this kind are a qualification tool. They tell you which buildings in a territory have an assembly, who the agency thinks is behind, and what the device is, so a call is informed rather than cold. Everything after that is field work.
Every row is delivered with the identifiers needed to check it at the agency before anyone is contacted. That is not a courtesy; it is the only responsible way to use a dated extract.
Not a government document
§06 Contact
Ask what is published where you work
Send the trade you are licensed for and the area you cover. The reply says which records exist there, whether the agency maintains a compliance state, and what the fields look like. Where nothing usable is published, that is the reply.
Email is the only channel. There is no form on this site, no newsletter and no tracking.