Journal of Water and Health (Dec 2023)
Operationalising water safety plans for Melbourne – a large city case study
Abstract
A wholesale/retail model delivers drinking water to over 5 million residents in metropolitan Melbourne (Australia). Water Safety Plans were implemented in 1999 ahead of being regulatory mandated in 2003. With over 20 years of WSP application, this collaborative paper by the wholesaler and retailer utilities presents practical examples of drinking water quality risk management in challenging operational environments, highlighting lessons learnt, improvements made and outcomes achieved. Melbourne's supply comprises multiple sources, necessitating different tailored treatment configurations. Source waters range from open catchment with multiple treatment barriers, to protected catchment source waters requiring solely disinfection treatment (unfiltered) with gravity driven supply. Potable supply is a combination of unfiltered, filtered, desalinated and blended supplies. This makes for diversity in case studies brought to this paper, and a range of lessons likely to be of interest to the global WSP community. The Melbourne utility experience highlights the importance of developing and continually improving control measures for ongoing (adaptive) risk reduction. A robust emergency management plan is also fundamental to ensure preparedness for complex and unpredictable events. Furthermore, leveraging learnings from audits and incidents has been valuable for process improvement. WSP implementation has also facilitated timely communication with consumers and other stakeholders. HIGHLIGHTS Challenges and practical application, of water safety plans, including examples.; Importance of operationalising WSPs, to provide safe water to the community.; Examples of WSP applications to incident management and emergency response.; Application of WSPs to diverse sources of supply (e.g. filtered vs unfiltered).; Collaboration across four utilities for WSP application from catchment to tap.;
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