Audit Report on Department of Environmental Protection Compliance with Procedures for Issuing Three-Day Notices

Audit Report In Brief

We performed an audit of the Department of Environmental Protection’s (the Department) procedures for identifying leaks in service lines and issuing three-day notices to property owners. If personnel of the Department’s Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations find that a property’s water service line is leaking, a “three-day notice to repair” is issued to the owner. A three-day notice requires that a property owner hire, at the owner’s expense, a licensed plumber to repair or replace the defective water line within three calendar days. If a property owner does not comply with the notice, the Department has the authority to shut off the water service to the property.

When complying with a three-day notice, a property owner’s plumber must test the service line to confirm whether it is indeed leaking before repairing or replacing it. If testing reveals that the service line is not leaking, the property owner is entitled to file a property tort claim with the Comptroller’s Office to recover the cost of hiring the plumber. Reimbursement to the property owner is limited to the cost of the testing work required to confirm whether the service line was leaking.

According to the Department officials, in Fiscal Year 2001, the Department performed 10,300 leak investigations. The Department issued 3,218 three-day notices, 74 of which were issued in error.

Although the error rate in issuing three-day notices is small compared with the number of leak investigations performed by the Department, we noted the following issues, which if addressed, would further enhance the program.

• The Department has no written procedures for conducting leak investigations.
• The aquaphone, one instrument that the Department uses to sound (listen to) a building’s service line, does not always produce accurate results.
• The Department should improve its communication with the public in order to minimize the number of unproductive repeat visits to gain access to properties and to prevent the public from incurring unnecessary expenses.

The Department should:

• Develop formal written procedures for conducting leak investigations.
• Provide appropriate training to Department staff on the formal procedures.
• Consider implementing a pilot program to evaluate whether it is cost effective to provide supervisory personnel with more sophisticated equipment for identifying leaks.
• Revise its notification forms to inform property owners of the reason(s) the Department needs to gain access to the premises and of the actions it wishes the owner to take in response to the notice.
• Revise the three-day notices to inform property owners of the procedures for investigating and confirming leaks in service lines.
• Print “missed you” and three-day notices in multiple languages.