Aurelio
Ferraro.
Founder of the practice. WI DSPS Master Plumber since 2002. ASSE 5110 backflow tester since 2008, 5130 repair since 2014, 5150 trainer since 2018. The reason there's a parts cabinet labeled in IBM Plex Mono.
Path
Aurelio Ferraro was raised in Bay View, finished plumbing apprenticeship through UA Local 75 in 1999, became a journeyman in 2001, took the WI master test in 2002, and worked for the next twelve years on the truck for Roman Electric & Plumbing (no longer in business under that name; the residential half was sold to Halquist Stone in 2014). The last six years of that tenure were spent in increasing concentration on commercial backflow work — first as the backup, then as the de facto specialist, then as the only person on the crew who could pass the ASSE 5110 written. The work suited him: it had a clear pass/fail outcome, a regulatory deadline, and a small enough set of equipment that he could carry a full kit on one truck.
He took the 5110 in 2008 in Schaumburg, Illinois — the closest test site to Milwaukee at the time — and was Illinois-credentialed until Wisconsin started honoring the certification reciprocally in 2014. The same year he founded Walker's Point Cross-Connection Co. from the basement of a Bay View duplex on E. Russell Avenue with a Mid-West 845-5 gauge, $4,200 of starting inventory, and the conviction that Milwaukee's commercial backflow market was big enough to support a single-purpose shop.
What he does now
Ferraro signs every install report, every survey report, and any failed-test report on a high-hazard assembly. He is the field tester on Walker's Point, the Third Ward, the Menomonee Valley, and roughly 60% of the downtown core. He carries Gauge-01 (Pelican case marked "01" in IBM Plex Mono); the others rotate.
He teaches a Wednesday-evening continuing-education module at Milwaukee Area Technical College on cross-connection control to fourth-year plumbing apprentices. The module runs every spring semester from January to early May. He has trained 84 plumbers in the credential since 2019, of whom 7 currently work in Milwaukee County as ASSE 5110 testers at other practices and one (M. Okafor) now works at WPCC.
What he doesn't do
Ferraro hasn't done residential service since 2014 and does not return phone calls from homeowners asking about a basement water heater. He politely declines the half-dozen yearly requests he gets to expand the practice into water-heater installation or drain cleaning. The reason is that the four-drawer cabinet doesn't hold rebuild kits for water heaters and he has no professional curiosity about wax-ring leaks.
Outside the truck
Ferraro lives in Bay View with his husband (a librarian at the Milwaukee Public Library Bay View Branch), restores 1960s Italian motorcycles in the garage on weekends, and runs the Lakefront Marathon every October. He is on the board of Urban Ecology Center's Three Bridges branch, which sits on the south bank of the Menomonee River about a mile from our shop.
Contact
Direct: (414) 837-2204 x101 · af@wpccrossconnect.example. Hours 06:30–16:30 Mon–Fri. If it's after hours and you have a real cross-connection emergency (visible discharge from a relief vent, a known backflow event), call the main line and listen for the emergency option — it routes to whichever tester is on call.