HASSO HERING

The City Hall plaza, with the courthouse in the background, on Monday night, Dec. 12.

Sitting through an Albany City Council meeting has its reward — when it’s over and you walk out and are greeted by the festive lights on the City Hall plaza on a December night.

Monday’s council work session was routine. Two things are worth noting.

The first is that new bus routes and schedules of the Albany Transit System, planned for more than a year, will not start until the spring of 2023.

Barry Hoffman, transit systems supervisor for the city, told the council lots of stuff has to happen before then. The main thing: New bus stops have to be built. And all of them have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The second thing is that the council learned it will have a hearing Wednesday on a North Albany property owner’s challenge of the city staff’s interpretation of a code requirement on water system backflow prevention devices.

In a nutshell, the code is intended to keep the water system from being contaminated. It requires that backflow preventers be installed — and inspected yearly at the customers’ expense — when a property has an auxiliary water supply, like a well, “which is or can be connected to the potable water piping.”

In the case at hand, the property has a well for irrigation that is not connected to the city water system. But the city says it could be if, for instance, someody makes a plumbing mistake.

The owner, Darla Luther, says the well system has been in use for 50 years and has never been connected to the house water, and never will be. So why require a backflow preventer?

The council discussed all this at great length on Sept. 14 but didn’t take a vote. You can watch the YouTube meeting here.

The owner got a lawyer and now is asking for a hearing and a formal council decision. This will be part of the council session Wednesday night.

Why the fuss? It’s not entirely clear. There are about 9,000 backflow preventers in use on the Albany water system. Everybody with a sprinkler system connected to city water is supposed to have one.

A preventer costs about $200, and the yearly inspection is about $35, the council was told in September.

There is, however, an interesting wrinkle in the city code.

It says that if someone is found to have a cross-connection, the owner has 60 days to disconnect it or — OR — install a backflow device before the city will shut off the water.

So if you have a cross-connection, you can fix it by disconnecting it. When it’s disconnected, you’re OK, according to the code.

But if there is no cross-connection in the first place, that’s not good enough. Somehow that’s a violation.

So according to the municipal code (as I read it), one potential solution in the case at hand is to connect the well to the house plumbing, tell the city about it, and then break the connection again.

That’s what the city law seems to say. But if it does, then in the words of the immortal Mr. Bumble in Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” the law is an ass. (hh)

This story originally said the new transit routes would start in the spring of 2024. On Wednesday night, Hoffman told the council he had made a mistake and the target date is spring of 2023, next spring, but it depends on whether the city can hire enough additional bus drivers.