Water Safety Plans

Water Safety Plans (WSP) are an effective way of ensuring that a water supply is safe for human consumption and that it meets the health based standards and other regulatory requirements. It is based on a comprehensive risk assessment and risk management approach to all the steps in a water supply chain from catchment to consumer.

Essentially, a WSP has three key components:

• A system assessment to determine whether the water supply chain as a whole can deliver water of a quality that meets health-based targets. This system assessment identifies the potential hazards in each part of the water supply chain, the level of risk presented by each identified hazard and the appropriate measures to control the identified risks to ensure that the water supply is safe, the standards and targets are met and human health is protected;
• Operational monitoring of an appropriate nature and frequency at an appropriate point in the water supply chain is defined for each control measure identified and implemented from the system assessment to ensure that any deviation from the required performance is rapidly detected; and
• Documentation of management arrangements including details of the system assessment, operational monitoring and validation monitoring together with a description of the actions to be taken in normal operation and incident conditions when there is, or there is a risk of, non-compliance with a standard or target value or failure to meet an operational control, or there is a potential risk to human health. These actions should include appropriate investigations, remedial action in the form of improvement programmes, reporting and communication.

The primary objectives of a water safety plan in protecting human health and ensuring good water supply practice are the minimisation of contamination of source waters, the reduction or removal of contamination through appropriate treatment processes and the prevention of contamination in the distribution network and the domestic distribution system. These objectives are applicable to all water supply chains, irrespective of their size or complexity and are achieved through:

• development of an understanding of the specific system and its capability to supply water that meets health-based targets;
• identification of potential sources of contamination and how they can be controlled;
• validation of control measures employed to control hazards;
• implementation of a system for monitoring the control measures within the water system;
• timely corrective actions to ensure that safe water is consistently supplied; and
• undertaking verification of drinking-water quality to ensure that the WSP is being implemented correctly and is achieving the performance required to meet relevant national, regional and local water quality standards or objectives.

A water safety plan basically contains the following steps:

A somewhat similar tool in regard to sanitation are city sanitation plans.