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Water Safety Plans For Small Systems: 13.1 Prioritising Hazards
Water Safety Plans For Small Systems: 13.1 Prioritising Hazards
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more stable microbial quality. Where small systems include piped distribution with
connections at a ‘within-house level of service’ feeding showers there is a risk from
Legionella, although control strategies may require greater involvement by external
bodies as this may be beyond the capacity of community operators to control.
Chemical hazards are most likely to result from either natural sources or
agricultural pollution. Of the natural chemicals, arsenic and fluoride are likely to be
the most significant problems facing small systems. Nitrate and pesticides may be
found in areas of agriculture (and on-site sanitation in the case of nitrate) and lead
may be problem in older distribution systems. Problems of chemical contamination
may also be found with rainwater collection in areas with high air pollution or where
chemicals leach from roofing material.
By preference, the assessment of risks posed by chemicals in water should be
based on data derived from water quality tests performed on samples of water taken
from water supplies before commissioning. However, it is unlikely that such data
exist for all supplies and therefore risk assessment may be based on an incomplete set
of data. The WHO document ‘Chemical Safety of Drinking-water: assessing priorities
for risk management’ (Thompson et al. 2004) provides further guidance in how to
identify chemicals likely to pose the greatest risk to health in a country or region or
water supply employing a particular technology type. Although chemical quality in
deeper groundwater is often stable, in shallow groundwater chemical quality may
vary significantly with rainfall and seasonal fluctuations have been noted for arsenic
and nitrate (Barrett et al. 2000).
The water safety plan should propose control measures for chemical hazards where
possible. However, in most cases, the control of these hazards must be addressed at
the design stage (for instance by setting appropriate intake depths) rather than
operational controls. Monitoring is unlikely to be feasible by the operators of small
systems and therefore any water quality testing will necessarily devolve to the
surveillance agency. This further supports the need for the water safety plan to focus
on microbial quality in smaller systems.
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few households would be most likely to require the development of a generic water
safety plan for the technology used. Appendix B provides examples of generic water
safety plans that can be adapted to circumstances in different countries and/or regions.
These could also function as model water safety plans.
In larger communities, including small towns, the capacity of communities to use
guidance material to develop water safety plans may be much greater. The greater
complexity of the supplies and wider range of hazardous environments that could
occur will also make it desirable that water safety plans be tailored to the conditions
in individual supplies.
In developing water safety plans for small systems, the implementation of the
plans will be highly dependent on the training and resource material made available to
operators. This is also likely to require ongoing support in maintaining the water
safety plan and providing periodic updating. This is often a role that the surveillance
agency will play, in addition to their role in independent assessment of water safety.
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rather a set of simplified tools for community operators were developed to support
action-orientated monitoring.
Water safety plans for can be based on the results of studies of water quality and
sanitary inspection on a representative sample of water supplies throughout the
country that reflect different climatic and hydrogeological conditions (Howard, 2003).
Hazardous events that affect particular technologies, the likelihood of their occurrence
and the impact of water quality can be assessed through simultaneous collection of
sanitary inspection and water quality data. The process followed is also a form of
validation of the protection barriers put in place around a small water source to secure
water safety.
Sanitary inspection forms should be used to undertake the hazardous event
assessment. These may initially identify a long list of questions to be asked regarding
the security of the source, which through piloting and review of data may be reduced
to key questions that apply for all sources of the same technology. The material
shown in Appendix C provides examples of the types of forms that may be developed.
These forms include a range of factors that can be broadly categorised into three
groups (Howard 2002):
• Hazard factors – these are potential sources of faeces situated so that they
may represent a risk to the water supply (an example being the location of a
pit latrine in relation to the water source).
• Pathway factors – these are potential routes by which contamination may
enter the water supply (examples include eroded backfill areas of protected
springs, or leaking pipes).
• Indirect factors – these are factors that represent a lack of a control measure to
prevent contamination (and therefore increase the likelihood of a hazard or
pathway developing), but do not themselves represent either a hazard or a
pathway. An example of this is a fence around the water source. The absence
of a fence will not lead directly to contamination, but may allow animals or
humans to gain access to the source and create either a hazard (through
defecation) or a pathway (through causing damage to the source or its
immediate surroundings).
In many cases the presence of multiple factors may be required in order for
contamination to result, based on a source-pathway-receptor model that is commonly
used to explain contamination. There are likely to be exceptions to this general rule,
for instance where a particular hazard is the sole cause of the contamination (Lloyd
and Bartram 1991). In such a case, while reductions in other risks may be desirable,
they may potentially have limited impact on the quality of water (Howard 2002).
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Studies to support the development of water safety plans can be undertaken in
several ways. Longitudinal studies require repeated sampling of the same sources
over an extended period, with one year being a realistic minimum to gain a sufficient
set of data to represent variation in quality. If these studies are undertaken then the
collection of rainfall data is strongly advisable. Cross-sectional studies may also be
used, which will typically involve single samples taken from a wider range of sources.
These have an advantage in that a much wider range of sources may be visited
which may increase representivity in relation to the source characteristics, but will not
provide information regarding seasonal fluctuations in quality. If data are also
collected on rainfall then some indication of the impact of rainfall may be possible.
The final method is to review data available from routine monitoring programmes,
whether in their entirety or a sample of results. This approach may provide a mixture
of data from repeated sampling from the same sources with single samples taken from
sources, which may add to the complexity of the analysis of the data.
Analysis of the data from the studies is important in understanding the relative
importance of different hazardous events and in the interactions between risk factors
that lead to contamination occurring. This allows both the identification of specific
control measures and also provides a greater insight into how different possible
hazardous events may occur. Statistical analysis may be based on simple assessments
of frequency of reporting of sanitary risks (Cronin et al, 2002) or through the use of
contingency tables and logistic regression (Howard et al, 2003).
References:
APSU, 2005 ‘Support to implementation of water safety plans, www.apsu-bd.org
Cronin A, Breslin N, Taylor RG and Pedley S, 2002, Assessing the risks to
groundwater quality from on-site sanitation and poor sanitary well
completion, in 'Eocsan- closing the loop', Proceedings of the Second
International conference of Ecological Sanitation, Lubeck, Germany, April
2003.
Howard G, Pedley, S, Barrett M, Nalubega M & Johal K. (2003). Risk factors
contributing to microbiological contamination of shallow groundwater in Kampala,
Uganda. Water Research, 37(14): 3421-3429.
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13.1: Contingency table analysis of water quality and sanitary inspection data (adapted from Howard et al. 2003)
Variable Faecal streptococci >0 cfu/100ml Thermotolerant coliforms >10 cfu/100ml
Odds ratio p 95% CI Odds ratio p 95% CI
Faulty masonry 1.913 0.008 1.185-3.087 1.506 0.075 0.960-2.363
Backfill area eroded 2.276 0.001 1.381-3.749 2.762 <0.001 1.716-4.445
Collection area floods 0.966 0.890 0.591-1.579 0.603 0.035 0.377-0.964
Fence absent or faulty 5.175 0.052 0.987-27.138 3.496 0.138 0.668-18.303
Animal access <10m 2.010 0.488 0.279-14.471 1.366 0.756 0.190-9.826
Surface water uphill 3.655 <0.001 2.054-6.507 3.933 <0.001 2.316-6.680
Diversion ditch faulty 1.114 0.679 0.667-1.862 1.324 0.263 0.810-2.163
Other pollution uphill 2.040 0.259 0.577-7.210 5.728 0.029 1.196-27.429
Latrine <30m uphill of spring 1.229 0.455 0.715-2.113 1.759 0.036 1.038-2.979
Latrine <50m uphill of spring 0.862 0.547 0.532-1.397 0.738 0.198 0.465-1.171
High population density 2.889 <0.001 1.780-4.688 4.708 <0.001 3.899-7.644
Waste <10m uphill of spring 0.144 0.150 0.875-2.380 2.557 <0.001 1.560-4.189
Waste <20m uphill of spring 1.340 0.231 0.830-2.163 3.085 <0.001 1.923-4.950
Waste <30m uphill of spring 0.842 0.590 0.451-1.573 1.896 0.031 1.059-3.397
Rainfall within previous 5 days 2.284 0.009 1.225-4.259 4.097 <0.001 2.096-8.008
Rainfall within previous 2 days 3.285 <0.001 2.014-5.357 3.827 <0.001 2.385-6.139
Rainfall with previous day 2.583 0.001 1.473-4.529 2.115 0.004 1.276-3.506
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Table 13.2: Generic water safety plan for protected spring not connected to a piped network
Hazardous event Cause Risk Control Critical limits Monitoring Corrective Verification
measure Target Action What When Who action
Contam. able to Backfill area Mod/ Effective Area has Fence is broken Sanitary Monthly CO Repair fencing Sanitary
recharge spring in becomes major spring grass cover; Diversion ditch inspection and ditches; inspection and
backfill area eroded protection fence and is damaged drain surface analysis of:
measures diversion Surface water water. Re-lay E.coli and faecal
maintained ditch in good pools develop grass. streptococci
condition Rehabilitate
No surface protective
water uphill measures
Contamination in Spring box Mod/ Maintain Masonry in Masonry Sanitary Monthly CO Repair masonry Sanitary
spring box or or retaining major to protection and good deteriorated; inspection and covers; inspection and
outlet wall in poor mod drainage works condition; ww ditch clear ditch analysis of:
condition, ww ditch blocked E.coli and faecal
inundn from clear and in streptococci
ww good
condition
Contam. surface Surface Mod to un/ Establish set- No surface Surface water Sanitary Monthly/ CO Drain surface Sanitary
water causes water is major back distance water, solid close to springs inspection seasonally water pools inspection and
rapid recharge allowed to based on travel waste dumps Low sanitation Colour uphill of analysis of:E.coli
form pools time; drainage uphill coverage change springs, and faecal
uphill and Faecal Poor solid response to promote streptococci
leads to rapid disposal waste removal rainfall improved
recharge of methods Springs show sanitation and
pollutants available rapid response solid waste
and limited in flow and disposal
attenn quality to
rainfall
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Hazardous event Cause Risk Control Critical limits Monitoring Corrective Verification
measure Target Action What When Who action
Ingress of animal Animal Mod/ mod Set-back No kraals or Animal Sanitary Monthly CO Remove animal Sanitary
faeces husbandry distance to sheds in set- husbandry inspection sheds or kraals inspection
uphill and Control animal back found within from uphill of E.coli, faecal
close to the husbandry; distance; controlled area spring or move streptococci,
spring good fencing fence in good Fencing to safe distance bacteriophages,
Animal condition damaged or Repair or erect nitrate
damage to absent fences
backfill area
Leaching of Leaching of Mod/ Provide No sources Latrines/ Inspection by Monthly CO Move pollutant Sanitary
microbial faecal mod adequate set- of faecal sewers built or community sources, inspection
contaminants into material back distances material solid waste improve E.coli, faecal
aquifer from defined on within set- dumps within sanitation streptococci,
sanitation, travel time back distance separation design, reduce bacteriophages,
solid waste, distance sewer leakage nitrate, chloride,
drains tracer studies
Leaching of Leaching of Mod/ Provide No sources Pollutant Inspection by Monthly CO Move pollutant Inspection
chemicals into chemicals minor adequate set- of chemicals discharges community sources, Analysis of
groundwater from back distances within set- within set-back improve chemical
landfills, defined on back distance distance pollution composition of
waste travel time containment pollution
dumps, Analysis of water
discharges to quality
ground
Contam. – contamination; Mod – moderate; Un – unlikely; inundn – inundation; attenn – attenuation ; ww – wastewater;
CO – community operator
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13.3.2 Implementing a system of support for generic
technology water safety plans
Once the generic technology water safety plans have been developed, the water
safety plan team will need to develop a strategy for rolling-out implementation
of the water safety plans at a source level. This will require the development and
testing of simple monitoring and operational tools for community operators,
development of training materials and a programme of ongoing support and
surveillance. These tools should be piloted in a small number of communities,
evaluated and refined before trying to roll-out a programme across a country.
Responsibility for ensuring water safety and implementing a water safety
plan in a community-managed supply resides with the operator of the supply
who, by using tools for monitoring and maintaining control measures, should
have the skills and resources to ensure that the relevant generic technology
water safety plan can be applied. Ensuring that the operators have adequate
skills and capacity to perform this role is a critical aspect of the effective
implementation of a water safety plan. This requires that the tools developed for
community operators are easy to use and provide the operator with information
for each control measure, such as:
• what the control measure is and how it prevents or reduces
contamination;
• how the performance of the control measure is measured and what
monitoring tools should be used;
• how often monitoring should be undertaken and how information will
be recorded;
• to identify when the control measure has exceeded a critical limit; and
• to apply the appropriate corrective action when a critical limit has been
exceeded.
Figure 13.1: Community operator requirements for water safety plan implementation
The first component of the water safety plan is a simplified guide to the
technology that should provide the operator with a basic description of the
technology, how it works, how it prevents or reduces contamination and what
problems could occur that would result in contamination. This guide should
provide the operator with a good understanding of their system and how their
activities are important in controlling risks. The use of illustrations is likely to
be important in all circumstances and in particular for operators of very small
systems in developing countries.
Community operators will also need simple tools for monitoring of the
control measures and actions to be taken when the control measures are no
longer in compliance with critical limits. Monitoring of the control measures can
largely be achieved through regular sanitary inspection. This should use
approaches that are closely linked to actions to be taken as a result of monitoring
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data indicating that a critical limit is being exceeded. Either pictorial or written
forms may be appropriate depending upon the level of literacy. In both cases,
however, it should be clear what is action is expected when the monitoring
indicates a loss of control measure compliance. Example forms are shown in
Tables 13.3 and 13.4.
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Table 13.4 Checklist for operation and maintenance of a protected spring
Activity Dry season Wet season Action limits
Routine After heavy
rainfall
Clear uphill At least once At least once Always inspect Clean if ditch contains mud
diversion ditch per month per week or silt
Clear drainage At least once At least once Always inspect Clean if ditch contains mud
ditch from per month per week or silt
outlets
Slashing grass At least once At least once Cut grass once it exceeds
inside fence per dry per month mid-shin height
season
Make sure steps At least once At least once Always inspect Clean and repair when dirty
are clean and not per week per week or showing signs of
broken breaking
Clear rubbish At least once At least once Always inspect Dispose of rubbish properly
away from area per week per week
around spring,
particularly
uphill
Keep paths and At least once At least once Clear paths and dispose of
grassed areas per month per month rubbish properly
above springs
clear of rubbish
Trim hedge once Do not trim in As soon as Trim hedge
it reaches a the dry season hedge reaches
height of 4 feet 4 feet in
height
Carry out regular At least twice Daily Always inspect Record faults and identify
inspections of per week actions to be taken
the spring and
note any faults
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The materials and tools required by operators to implement a generic water
safety plan are summarised in Figure 13.2 below.
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Figure 13.3: Implementing the water safety plan roll-out
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13.3.4 Progressive expansion
The progressive rolling-out of the water safety plans requires careful planning
and will almost certainly have to address the two different situations of new
supplies being developed and application of water safety plans to existing water
supplies. It is recommended that programmes be developed for both situations,
with training and support to water safety plan development in all new supplies
that are developed and a programme to provide training and support to
implement water safety plans in existing supplies prepared.
A water safety plan should be developed for all new supplies with
appropriate training, tools and documentation provided to operators before the
supply is commissioned. This should be supported by testing of samples of
water taken from the source as part of a commissioning report. The selection of
chemicals to be included should be based on an assessment of the natural
chemicals and pollutants likely to be present, based on the geology, climate and
land-use. Further guidance is available in Thompson et al. (2004) for inclusion
in drinking-water quality monitoring programmes.
The existing supplies are likely to represent a larger group than the new
supplies and thus the programme will need to consider the most effective
approach to developing appropriate water safety plans and associated support
programmes. This will be most effectively done through the progressive rolling-
out across the country/region.
The roll-out of generic water safety plans could be integrated into the
development of a regional surveillance programme. In terms of planning, it is
important that the rolling-out takes into account the capacity of the surveillance
agency and water supply agency/authority to provide ongoing support to
communities. Experience from a number of countries has shown that to have an
impact on the quality of small water supplies, surveillance programmes must be
directly linked to interventions (Bartram 1999; Moore 1999). Therefore
investment to support water safety plans should be linked to investment in order
to support development of surveillance at local levels.
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the principal faecal indicator organisms used will be E.coli or thermotolerant
coliforms, a limited number of analyses of other organisms such as faecal
streptococci and bacteriophages may also be included. Such analyses would be
expected to be performed on a smaller number of supplies and form specific
targeted assessments rather than broader routine surveillance.
It is unlikely that verification will occur at every small supply on a frequent
basis as the costs involved in regular visits and testing are prohibitive in most
countries. Therefore, verification should be designed as a means of assessing the
performance of the generic technology water safety plan as applied across a
number of water supplies rather than assessing the performance of its
application on individual supplies. If this approach is adopted then only a
sample of supplies using the generic water safety plan need to be visited each
year. It would be expected, however, that each supply would be visited
regularly, for instance once every three to five years.
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addition to guides to support local water safety plan development. In developing
guides on the preparation of the water safety plans, a national team of experts
with extensive experience of small water supplies should be established to
develop both the guides and model water safety plans.
The first stage in developing the guides and model water safety plans is to
decide what types of supply will be targeted. Implementation is likely to be
easier to plan and manage if a clear distinction is drawn between the types of
water supply or community where generic technology water safety plans should
be used and those that will be expected to develop system-specific water safety
plans using guides and model water safety plans. Clear criteria should be
established, for instance in relation to technology type, management
arrangements and population size. Some possible criteria are as follows:
• treatment is applied within the water supply (including where only
terminal disinfection is used routinely);
• the water supply has a piped distribution system that serves more than a
few public taps;
• the population served by the individual supply exceeds 1000 people;
• the supply has more than one operator, who receive some payment for
services provided; and,
• there is distinct management body with a constitution.
In order to achieve the local development of water safety plans for small
systems, the operators will need a range of information as outlined in Figure
13.4.
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Figure 13.4: Supporting guided water safety plan development and implementation
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13.4.2 Developing and testing the guides
The guidance material may take a number of forms including manuals, videos,
audio-visual material and web-based guides. The guides should provide
sufficient information to allow users to follow the process and should refer to
model water safety plans. The guides should be structured so that the user is
taken through all the stages of the establishment and implementation of a water
safety plan. The use of decision-trees and flow-charts is particularly helpful and
the guides should provide questions to prompt the user to identify information
needs and how to acquire this information. The guides should assist the user in
making key decisions, for instance regarding the selection of particular control
measures or the frequency of monitoring or verification that will be required.
The team developing the guidance material should include water quality
specialists but will also be likely to benefit from participation from professionals
within the knowledge transfer sector. The success of the guides may rest, to a
significant extent, on the degree to which the guides are user-friendly and use a
language and approach that is comprehensible to the target audience.
Before embarking on a programme of guided water safety plan development,
the materials within the guides and model water safety plans should be piloted
and evaluated. Where additional training is to be provided to operators this
should also be piloted and evaluated to ensure that the materials prepared will
result in effective water safety plans being developed.
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13.4.4 Verification
Where the process of establishing a water safety plan is being guided in the
fashion outlined above, how verification is undertaken should be carefully
considered. In some situations it may be possible for the system operators to
undertake some verification using low-cost analytical equipment. This would
primarily focus on the analysis of water quality, with principal focus on E.coli
or thermotolerant coliforms and chemical hazards of concern. Verification
programmes will need to be undertaken regularly and the surveillance agency
should support and approve local verification programmes.
In this situation, the surveillance agency will still be required to conduct
additional analysis of the water quality, including assessments of a wider range
of indicator organisms and chemicals, and undertake audits of the systems. In
other cases, primary responsibility for verification may devolve to the
surveillance agency as in the case of the technology generic water safety plans.
Whether verification is performed by both the operator and surveillance agency
or surveillance agency alone, the primary objective of verification is the
performance of the water safety plan for individual supplies, with broader
lesson-learning a secondary objective.
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