A man who is running for the Colorado House District in the twenty eighth House district.
Peter Body.
Of course, Peter, I chose to pronounce your name incorrectly before you came on the air with me, but never fear, I have corrected myself and welcome to the program.
Thank you, Thank you for having me on.
So, first of all, I.
Want to ask you why did you decide to run for the twenty eighth House District seat.
Well, I love Colorado and I love my country, and we have some problems that need to be addressed, and our Colorado legislature is out of control and I want to repair some of the damage and change things down there. So it's costing people money, and there's all kinds of problems that are being caused by an out of control legislature.
So what specifically got your attention? And I'm directing you to the big backflow blunder which you are out there publicizing. Tell my listeners what happened when one word changed, literally, one word change destroyed businesses and jobs.
Explain how this has happened.
Sure, well, I call it the big backflow blunder, and it was caused by my opponent the incumbent in House District twenty eight, and it was a change to the state Plumbing Board Law, which had to be renewed because of sunset. And it was a change that the Plumbing Board law addresses licensing of plumbers and the regulations for plumbing,
which is a necessary law and needed to be renewed. However, at the last minute they changed a couple words involving what's called the back flow prevention device testing, and they changed it so the previous law said backflow testing shall be exempt from being performed by licensed plumbers, and they
change that too, are not exempt from plumbing license plumbers. Well, backflow devices are on all commercial buildings and large irrigation systems and even most of your backyard irrigation systems have a backflow device. And what that does is it prevents if you have a break in your system, in your building or in your irrigation system, there's a big loss
of pressure, something happens. It prevents potentially contaminated water in your system, in your system from going back into the public water supply.
Okay, it's a stopgap.
It's been around for decades.
Okay, it's a stop gap to prevent cross contamination if something goes wrong in one.
Place exactly okay.
And so there's been a whole industry built up of backflow tester certify backflow tester. They have to be take training and perform these tests once a year on all the commercial operations. Those have to be submitted to the water utilities and submitted to the state Health Department. And if you don't get the testing done, that creates a
potential health violation. And so by changing it from not requiring licensed plumbers at the behest of a plumber's union and a plumbers organization, which my opponent readily to come to their request, put it in without anybody knowing, and all of a sudden, hundreds of backflow testers who had been doing this work for decades were potentially crushed out
of business, couldn't perform the tests. And that went into effect July first, but nobody noticed, didn't till the laws started to take effect, and then it just created problems besides.
Go ahead, So these companies specifically do this one thing. They're not like doing this, and then I will take care of this plumbing issue. They have one job and they focus on this one thing because.
I want to make sure.
I mean, if they have all this other training, what would be the necessity of having.
It be a plumber.
There is no necessity. It's been working fine for decades. And these businesses, some of them do there's fire pressure testing and big buildings and things, so some of them do some other work. But the backfloat there are some that that's all they do, is the backflow of testing.
To Peter, if you're elected to the House of Representatives, what do you want to do here?
Well, the first thing is to resend this this provision in the bill, correct it, and it has to be corrected by April first. Everybody panicked because it caused so much trouble that they postponed implementation till April first, which would give me a chance to propose a bill, and
others propose a bill to fix the problem. Denver Water is so concerned about Denver Water Department, which serves a million and a half customers, I think, and they have forty four thousand of these devices that need to be tested every year. Because of the law going and effect July first, they were already behind on their testing. And if they get a notice from the State Health Department that they're in violation. They have to and out of
public notice. It costs a quarter of a million dollars per notice.
Oh good grief.
For them to mail for postage and mailing and printing. I just then you multiplied that by every water utility, right, and you have a big blunder.
I got this text message, Peter body who I'm talking to right now, Mandy. I just heard from a friend You're going to be doing a backflow segment on your show in about ten minutes because of the new law. I ended up selling my backflow business that I've had for eight years, and I'm a master plumber, still very active in the backflow community. But the way, oh hang on, some just updated there but them. But the way that the politics screwed with the entire system was enough for
me to get out of it. I was doing over sixteen hundred tests a year, and whichever party decided to change this law really screwed this industry up. I know for a fact that I asked you once to look into it, and it was before the nine News interview with Colleen Morrison, who was a good friend of mine. So yeah, this is having real life effects here.
Peter.
Let me ask you this aside from this, like this can't be the only thing that has you running. And people are asking where is the twenty eighth House district?
What is that encompass? What's your biggest areas?
It's the very south edge of Lakewood in Jefferson County. South edge of Lakewood down to about Coal Mine west to Sea four seventy and on the east is where parts of Denver and Arapahole County, Littleton kind of weave in and out on the east edge. Okay, so I call it central South Jefferson County.
So let me ask you this, what does it take to become a licensed plumber? Because somebody said so these black backflow companies can just become licensed plumbers to continue this business. How easy is it it to become a licensed plumber?
Well, I think it takes years. You have to become an apprentice, and I'm not that familiar with becoming a plumber. I just no electricians plumbers. They have to spend years training as an apprentice and testing and then you know, moving up to become a I guess a journeyman plumber and the master plumber. So it's not something that you do overnight and at the same time, the backflow testing requires a forty hour training and the passing a test.
So in the past the plumbers didn't want to bother sending one of their plumbers to get that test right. The plumber could do it, and it just was such small potatoes as some An attorney at the Denver Water Department told me that the plumbers never wanted to do it in the past because it wasn't sexy enough. It's just a small test.
Peter, we're out of time.
Why should people vote for Peter Body in the twenty eighth House district.
Well, as I've said, the legislature, the Democrats and legislature are are drunk on power, and you need to elect sober republic.
All right, Peter, Yeah, exactly Body.
For Colorado dot Com.
I put a link on the blog to your website, Pody, Peter, so people could see what you're up to.
Best of luck to you. Hopefully we'll talk to you when you become a member of the House.
Thank you, thank you, Peter.