The Evolution of Water Regulations

Historically in BC, drinking water safety legislation was limited to a few sections in the Health Act.

For new systems, there were no specific requirements for filtration or disinfection and no monitoring standards or criteria. For existing systems that posed a hazard or potential hazard to public health, the minister had the option of ordering water purveyors to alter or improve the system “…in the manner and within the time the minister may direct.”

The applicable sections of the Health Act evolved into a separate piece of legislation under the Health Act in 1992, called the Safe Drinking Water Regulation. It declared the need to maintain water that was safe to drink and, among other things, required:

• water system construction approvals
• disinfection of any surface water sources *
• monitoring and recording of disinfection processes
• public notification of existing or potential health hazards
• written Emergency Response Plans for each system

(*Universal disinfection of surface water was later amended to allow exemptions by the Medical Health Officer, although few systems were able to meet the exemption criteria.)

This legislation represented a shift in focus as purveyors were now required to be active in the prevention of hazards, in addition to reacting to them when they occurred.

Water chlorination was a significant historical advancement in public health. However, as the Provincial Health Officer describes in his Annual Report of 2000,

…despite these significant advancements, the threat from microbiological contamination of water had not been removed entirely. In fact, in the late 1980s and 1990s, a series of outbreaks of waterborne illnesses, particularly from the protozoa Giardia and Cryptosporidium around North America, along with the emergence of new toxin-producing strains of bacteria that can be carried in water, such as E. coli, has renewed the concern for the safety of our water supplies.

Further, in his 1999 review of BC’s drinking water sources, the Auditor General concluded, in part,

… the Province is not adequately protecting drinking-water sources from human-related impacts, and this could have significant cost implications in the future.

We acknowledge that increased source protection will incur costs… However, neglecting our drinking-water sources can also be costly. These amounts are large enough to suggest that the issue of source protection is worthy of increased attention.

Source protection is not a way of completely avoiding these investments. It must be backed up by appropriate levels of treatment. It should be a way of improving the protection given to water consumers, rather than a reason to neglect source protection.

This report highlights the need for increased vigilance in source protection, and the need for filtration, as part of the overall process of “improving the protection given to water consumers…”

In other words, there needed to be better protection of water supplies— from the original source water right through to the consumer’s tap.

Water safety legislation has changed from simple, general requirements to the more complex and specific requirements of today in response to evolving threats to water safety.

Still, further changes are needed to prevent outbreaks from occurring— a stronger approach.