Water source protection toolkit outlines steps to ensure drinking water is safe

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“So it’s much easier to protect those sources than to try to remediate or switch sources if they’re impacted.”

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She added that protecting these areas also create socio-economic and ecological benefits, which are not achieved through water treatment alone.

In order to ensure water sources are protected, the report suggests the City of Vernon take five steps and make use of eight tools.

STEPS:

• Bring partners together (and create a Technical Advisory Committee)
• Complete a Source Water Assessment
• Complete a Response Plan
• Carry out the Response Plan (using the tools)
• Review and Revise the Source Protection Plan

TOOLS:

• Collaboration
• Funding
• Policies, Plans and Bylaws
• Education and Engagement
• Natural Assets and green Infrastructure
• Emergency Preparedness and Response
• Mapping
• Monitoring and Reporting

“The tools in the toolkit are all based on the latest research, case studies, all those types of things that outline best practices for source wate protection,” explained Garcia, adding that over 35 case studies are included in the toolkit package’s additional information section.

Garcia said collaboration is the key point in the report, especially in the Okanagan where the watersheds are multi-use and on Crown land outside of the municipality’s jurisdiction.

“We have many different people out in the watershed doing different activities, including some high-impact activities such as using recreational vehicles or those types of things. We’ve got cattle, we’ve got forestry, all sorts of things going on right where our source water is coming from,” said Garcia.

“In the more urban areas, we’ve got land development having increasingly more impermeable surfaces, meaning less filtration of water.”

Garcia said Vernon should take action to partner with the provincial and federal governments, the forestry industry, the agriculture sector and the development industry to ensure all stakeholders follow the recommendations and do their part to protect the water sources and ensure they don’t become contaminated.

Garcia added that, under the Drinking Water Protection Act, every water supplier must do a source water assessment and create a response plan to, in effect, create a Source Protection Plan. While this is required by Interior Health in order to be issued a permit, Garcia said the response plan aspect was often overlooked.

“There was confusion around what that [plan] should look like, they thought, ‘We’ve done our assessment, we met our condition on our permit.’ But that wasn’t what Interior Health was looking for. They wanted that response plan as that’s your action plan, that’s your living document,” said Garcia.

She noted that, in order to clarify that source protection plan, the toolkit includes templates for water suppliers to use to create a plan, which in turn will also save them time and money.

She recommended people improve their water literacy so they can better understand how the watershed can be impacted and what can be done to protect those sources.

The full toolkit, as well as webinars held by the group that developed the recommendations, can be seen at the Source Water Protection website.

Council accepted the presentation for information.