Are you a "reasonable and informed person" when it comes to drinking water quality management?
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(Attend the CWWA Virtual Symposium on Drinking Water Quality Management and find out!)
Laith Furatian PhD, P.Eng.
March 21 and 22, in two 1.5-hour installments, the CWWA will host international experts in a virtual symposium on the topic of ensuring safe drinking water through drinking water quality management. Presenters will discuss approaches to quality management and continuous improvement, share practical experience and successes, and discuss challenges. A detailed program will soon be released. Please stay tuned for how to register.
Twenty years ago, in his Report on the Walkerton Inquiry, Justice O’Connor described safe drinking water partly in terms of the risk perceived by a "reasonable and informed person”. Though such persons often seem difficult to find in reality, most people would likely conclude after a bit of thought that compliance with numerical standards or guidelines for water quality are not enough, just as universal compliance with the speed limit alone does not ensure safety on the road. Drinking water safety, like road safety, depends on the appropriate design of infrastructure and equipment, safety features built into them, maintenance of assets, operator competency and vigilance, and other factors. O’Connor’s hypothetical person would thus possess knowledge of a water system that reduces the overall risk of consuming the finished product to a negligible level using a comprehensive list of measures, including sound quality management. Quality management includes the identification of system-specific hazards from source to consumer, evaluation and prioritization of risks from such hazards, use of barriers to adequately reduce risk to acceptable levels, monitoring to ensure barriers are intact and under control, prompt activation of corrective actions in response to deviation in or loss of control, periodic verification testing of barriers, and continuous improvement (i.e. quality management never ends). Such a system addresses water supply questions such as: What could go wrong and where should attention and resources be focused? How would we know if something went wrong and what should be done if it did?
In addressing quality management, O’Connor was recommending an approach to safe drinking water in Ontario that had been developing internationally and has now become an established framework in both Ontario and many countries around the world. In 2004, the approach was endorsed by the International Water Association in the Bonn Charter and integrated by the WHO into their Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality. In December 2020, the European Drinking Water Directive was revised to require the WHO approach be incorporated into the national drinking water regulations of member states. In the United States, a strong tradition of quality management has developed independently and is well established. However, the approach advocated by the Bonn Charter are gaining traction in the management of potable reuse and building water systems, both areas largely beyond the scope of the Safe Drinking Water Act (which in its many hundreds of pages of legislation never defines safe drinking water by the way).
Outside of Ontario, with a few exceptions, the concept of drinking water quality management is not part of the daily business of a Canadian water supply. Many water professionals, while understanding the component parts, may understandably not appreciate what exactly is meant by "quality management” in drinking water? To address this shortcoming, we hope you joint us for the virtual symposium. Hope to see you there!
