Drinking water safety plans: barriers and bridges for small systems in Alberta, Canada

Abstract

Water safety plans provide a relatively new management approach for identifying and addressing risks in a water supply. In 2011, the province of Alberta (Canada) became the first jurisdiction in North America to require that all water supplies develop drinking water safety plans (DWSPs). This research explored the implementation of DWSPs through the experiences of 'early adopter' operators who work in small communities. Specifically, inperson open-ended qualitative interviews with operators from 15 small communities from across Alberta were conducted to explore implementation challenges and opportunities. The findings highlight a number of barriers associated with the relationships between decision-making bodies, regulatory authorities and water operators, all of which have the potential to support or hinder the uptake of a DWSP. Findings also indicate that a DWSP can act as a bridge, providing a much-needed tool to facilitate communication about water supplies and help to support and manage relationships between stakeholders. This study revealed a number of important and useful insights to the small community early DWSP adopter experience in Canada that could be applied in other jurisdictions looking to adopt similar practices.

A Critical Evaluation of Water Safety Plans (WSPs) and HACCP Implementation in Water Utilities

“…Although, the basic principles for developing and implementing a WSP are the same in all countries, there is no rigorous methodology that dictates a specific way of developing it. Therefore, WSPs can be applied to a wide range of water utilities regardless of their location, degree of complexity and production capacity [34]. The first countries involved in the implementation of WSPs were Iceland in 1997 [13] and Australia in 1999 [12].…”

Including water quality monitoring in rural water services: why safe water requires challenging the quantity versus quality dichotomy

“…External support is needed The dilemma analysis found that lack of empowerment creates barriers to improving water safety through monitoring. This is also reflected in the literature on water safety planning, which frequently highlights inadequate financing [34][35][36][37] and capacity 34,35,[38][39][40] as substantial barriers to successful implementation. In rural areas in particular, inadequate financing and capacity have meant that water safety planning efforts focus on the early stages of the approach (assembling a team, describing the water supply and identifying hazards, developing and implementing a plan for improvement) but neglect the latter stages of monitoring, verification, and iterative learning 33,39 , which are crucial to the effectiveness and sustainability of the approach 29,37 .…”

“…The dichotomy sustains the view that taking responsibility for water safety is an excessive burden. As reflected in the literature, this view of monitoring-and water safety planning more broadly-as burdensome is a key difficulty for securing buy-in to the approach 35,43,44 . Though we have focussed in this study on rural context, the quantity versus quality dichotomy has broader relevance.…”

Collaboration on risk management: The governance of a non-potable water reuse scheme in London

“…Ferguson et al, 2013), water safety planning (e.g. Perrier et al, 2014) and risk governance (e.g. Dunn et al, 2015;Mauelshagen et al, 2014).…”