Proposed draft — not law
PROPOSED draft language under legal review — not enacted law, not a filed bill — Illinois only.
Drain Cover Safety
The VGB registry: tracking the safety device federal law already requires — through its whole service life.
In plain language
The federal Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act (15 U.S.C. 8001 et seq.) is named in memory of Virginia Graeme Baker, a seven-year-old girl who died from suction entrapment — held under water by the pull of a spa drain. The federal law passed in response requires certified anti-entrapment drain covers on public pools and spas.
Those covers age. Manufacturers rate each cover with an expiration date, after which its certification no longer holds — yet in practice nobody systematically tracks which covers are installed where, or when they expire. An expired cover looks exactly like a valid one.
PWO's §3.29 anchors the Illinois definitions to the federal standard: a suction outlet cover is one certified to the standard the VGB Act incorporates, and an anti-entrapment device is a safety vacuum release system or equivalent secondary protection. §11.6 then creates the registry: after May 1, 2030, a licensee shall register each cover and device — manufacturer, model, certification standard, lot or serial identifier, installation date, and manufacturer-rated expiration date — and the system shall flag a cover on or before its expiration date.
One deliberate limit: flagging is tracking, not punishment. The redline does not make an expired cover an automatic violation — what enforcement consequences should attach is a question left open for counsel. Responsibility for federal VGB compliance stays where it already sits: with the licensee.
What the July 2026 draft already covers
The base draft does not address suction outlet covers at all. Federal VGB obligations exist independently, but nothing in the Illinois act tracks which covers are installed or when they expire.
What Pure Water Ops adds
Both sections are PWO additions in full: the §3.29 definitions anchored to the federal VGB Act and the §11.6 registration requirement, including the manufacturer-rated expiration date and expiry flagging.
“The system shall flag a suction outlet cover or anti-entrapment device on or before its expiration date.”
What it means
For operators
A registry that surfaces an expiring cover before an inspection — or an incident — does. Registration uses data the operator already has at installation: serial, standard, install date, rated life.
For regulators
Statewide visibility into which certified covers are installed and when they age out, instead of discovering expired hardware one inspection at a time.
For the public
The anti-entrapment protection federal law requires is actually tracked through its service life, not just on the day it was installed.