Water Safety Planning made easy through the eWQMS!

In 2008 the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) introduced an incentive-based regulatory programme, Blue Drop Certification (BDC). An integral part of BDC is the development of Water Safety Plans (WSPs). Due to the challenges faced by municipalities in developing WSPs, the Water Research Commission (WRC) saw a need to assist municipalities, and subsequently a generic Water Safety Plan for Small Community Water Supplies was developed. The WRC also saw the need to develop an easy-to-use WSP tool for municipalities. The Municipal-based electronic Water Quality Management System (eWQMS) was selected as the platform for making the tool available.

Initially a spreadsheet based tool was developed and distributed to municipalities and stakeholders to establish the requirements for a web-based tool. Following feedback and on-going tool refinement, two web-based Water Safety Plan tools are now available to municipalities, namely:

Water Safety Plan Status Checklist – This tool allows one to rapidly assess progress in the WSP process (i.e. “where are we and what do we still need to do”). It considers typical steps of the WSP process and asks 5 key questions per step. A colour-coded “spider-diagram” output is provided of the status.

Water Safety Plan Tool – This tool is used to prepare a Water Safety Plan, and is largely based on the Water Research Commission (WRC) Water Safety Plan Guidelines, World Health Organization (WHO) Water Safety Plan Guidelines and other literature sources.

If you need assistance with accessing the eWQMS to utilise the above tools, or would like clarity on the tools please do not hesitate to contact us.