Drinking Water Safety

Indicator Type: Environmental Stewardship

The Drinking Water Safety Indicator is comprised of three separate sub-measures that collectively provide an indicator of the performance of regulated waterworks facilities in delivering safe drinking water to Albertans. These sub-measures relate to:

• Facility Design Standards,
• Facility Operational Requirements, and
• Drinking Water Quality.

Under the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act , Alberta Environment regulates waterworks facilities that provide drinking water to Albertans through a variety of developments, including campgrounds and rural subdivisions that use surface water sources, and all waterworks in villages, towns, and cities. Approximately 2.5 million Albertans receive their drinking water from facilities covered by this indicator. Private drinking water systems, such as on farms and acreages, and those regulated by others are not included in this indicator.

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Trend: Mixed trends

What does the indicator show?

In 2004-05, 409 of the 545 regulated systems (75 per cent) had treatment technology in place meeting the newest standards. This is an improvement of 32 facilities (6 per cent) over last year. For the Facility Operational Requirements (FOR) measure, 45 incidents were identified in 35 facilities this year. This is a decrease from the 59 incidents identified last year in 40 facilities. For the Water Quality (WQ) measure, there were 69 water quality incidents that occurred at 49 facilities. This is an increase from 48 incidents at 47 facilities last year. The increase may be due to increased self-reporting by facilities of performance requirement incidents. The number of self-reported incidents increased to 52 from only 15 last year. However, the number of government identified incidents identified during inspections decreased to 17 from 33 last year. This indicates operators are identifying, reporting, and taking action to correct problems immediately and the problems are not sustained or going unnoticed.

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Why is this indicator important?

The Drinking Water Safety Indicator reports on three important aspects of drinking water safety; the design of Alberta's water treatment plants, the operation of those plants and a comparison of the treated drinking water quality to required provincial standards. All three components contribute to the safety of Albertans' drinking water supplies.

Facility Design Standard
This measure reports the number of facilities keeping pace with current design requirements and indicates if continuous improvement is achieved. The measure is an assessment of an approved drinking water facility's design against the latest Alberta Environment design standards

Facility Operational Requirements
Water treatment plants must be operated correctly to produce safe water. This measure reports the number of major incidents where regulatory requirements have not been met and could lead to water quality incidents. Examples are not monitoring the plant as required or not having qualified operators.

Drinking Water Quality
This measure reports the number of incidents where the water supplied by a facility had a water quality parameter exceeding the required limits. The required limits are based on the Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality published by Health Canada and performance requirements specified by the province for a specific treatment technology.

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What actions are being taken?

Facility Design Standard
Alberta Environment design standards are reviewed and revised every five to 10 years. Staff members at Alberta Environment review individual facility performance and require facilities to upgrade to the current standards as necessary.

Facility Operational Requirements
Regulated facilities are required to self-report non-compliance. In addition, Alberta Environment staff annually inspect approved facilities and report the number of non-compliance incidents.

Drinking Water Quality
Regulated drinking water facilities must report on the quality of treated water against regulatory limits. The drinking water quality measure shows incidents where the water supplied by a facility had a water quality parameter exceeding the limits attached to the facility's approval or registration. Most health-related limits are a concern if the water is consumed over a long period of time (many years) and exceedances trigger the need to begin planning an upgrade. Performance requirements indicate if a plant is operating effectively and require immediate action by the operator. If the problem persists, intervention by Alberta Environment and the local health authority may be required. Intervention may range from a public health advisory, preventing consumption of the water, to a requirement to upgrade a facility.

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Links to additional information

Alberta Drinking Water program
http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/Water/DWQ/dwprogram.html

Alberta Drinking Water Quality
http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/water/dwq/index.cfm

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Feedback

E-mail the SOE Coordinator: SOE.Coordinator@gov.ab.ca or complete this short on-line questionnaire to provide your feedback: http://www.zoomerang.com/
survey.zgi?p=WEB224DW6P3E2K .

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