WATER SAFETY PLAN:
A comprehensive health-based risk assessment and risk management approach to optimizing drinking-water safety from catchment to consumer.

WATER SAFETY PLAN APPROACH

Poor water quality and inadequate sanitation accounts for 1,8 million deaths among children each year (WHO 2004) undermining economic growth and obstructing household’s efforts to escape poverty. In Latin America and the Caribbean an estimated 50 million people lack access to an improved water supply (Human Development Report, UNDP 2006).
The water safety plans are the most effective means to systematically guarantee innocuousness of drinking-water while protecting public health. It is a key component of the framework for safe of drinking-water (see table below) described on the Water Quality Guidelines, (WHO 3rd Ed., 2004).

These are based on the application of the integrated approach and risk evaluation of water supply systems from catchment down to consumer.

Safety determinations or the consideration of acceptable risks in specific situations, concern society for which each country has the faculty to decide the advantages of national or local regulations or even other guidelines and reference values of international standards.


A WSP is a holistic and systematic tool based on an integrated management approach with means to identify and prioritize potential threats to water quality at each step of the water supply chain. Its purpose lies on the implementation of better practice to mitigate those threats and so be able to ensure the quality of drinking-water.

The WSP is a rational outlining for risk control and exceeds the multiple weaknesses of the sanitary inspection approach and the inconvenient reliance on their analysis based on factors that specifically affect the innocuousness of water. WSP allows overcoming the dependency on the risky security feeling that sampling and water distribution system analysis offer. Allowing the identification of inherent risks along source, intake treatment and distribution through the application of control measures to prevent diseases related to the poor quality of water.

WSP’s key element to prevent dangers on catchment intake, treatment, distribution and consumer levels is the identification of Control Critical Points. By controlling these points one can detect and correct the problem before it reaches distribution and/or the consumer. This way, the sampling analysis on the distribution system is minimized next to the complete quality control which results preventive instead of reactive


WSP – THE FRAMEWORK


Source: WHO, Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality, Third edition, 2004

STEPS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WATER SAFETY PLAN


Source: Adapted from Water Safety Plans - Managing drinking-water quality from catchment to consumer – WHO – Geneva 2005


OBJECTIVES AND BENEFITS

WSP aims to help drinking-water providers and other stakeholders improve water quality and consistently meet established health-based targets by:

  • Controlling the contamination of the source water through managing activities in the watershed;
  • Optimizing the removal or inactivation of contaminants during treatment
  • Preventing recontamination during distribution, storage and handling

The WSP approach to ensure a safe water supply is flexible, accessible and serves to:

  • Identify opportunities for low-cost improvements on operations and management practices that can enhance water safety, improve efficiency and reduce expenses;
  • Improve stakeholders’ understanding of the complete water supply chain and its vulnerabilities;
  • Improve communication and collaboration between key stakeholder groups, such as water providers, consumers, regulatory authorities and commercial, environmental and health sectors
  • Sustain and prioritize capital improvement needs and help leverage financial support