Water safety plans for communities : guidance for adoption of water safety plans at community level

The millennium development goal (MDG) referring to water supplies stresses the need for sustainable access (quantity) to safe drinking water (quality). However, ensuring that safe water quality is maintained in community-based water supply projects is, in our experience, usually an ad hoc procedure, involving, on occasion, water quality testing events using field kits. In a few cases the water testing may form part of a regular water quality monitoring regime, but even when an established regime has been set up by an implementing agency, it often fails because of a lack of consumables for the kit, or breakdown of the incubator in the kit, or simply because the operator responsible is unable to visit the community in question as a result of events such as adverse weather conditions or security issues. Tearfund and its partners believe that a community water supply should be owned and managed by the user community which takes responsibility for the safety and reliability of the supply. This is where Water Safety Plans (WSPs) apply. Launched by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2004, WSPs move away from sole reliance on end-product testing, towards a process of quality assurance and preventative risk assessment and management. [authors abstract]