November 1, 2010

Implementation of Recommendations in Special Report No. 32 — Fit to Drink: Challenges in Providing Safe Drinking Water in British Columbia

• Each of the regional health authorities and the provincial health officer has developed a clear policy on drinking water complaints and made these available on their websites. We were pleased to see each of the authorities explain its role, and the types of complaints and concerns it can deal with (Recommendation 1.1).
• All the health authorities are now making up-to-date boil water advisories available on their websites (Recommendations 8 and 9).
• The Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport has updated the BC NurseLine and the HealthLinkBC website with information about the general advisory on drinking water safety for those with compromised or weakened immune systems. It has also communicated this warning to health authorities, drinking water officers, environmental health officers, licensing officers, medical health officers and other groups, and has created an addendum to the Drinking Water Officers’ Guide (Recommendation 13.1).
• Four of the five regional health authorities have provided us with positive, concrete results on their efforts to reduce the number of systems on boil water advisories by 10 per cent per year, by the end of 2011/12 (Recommendation 16):
  •  
    • The Fraser Health Authority reduced the number of systems on advisory by 25 per cent in 2008/09.
    • In 2008/09, the Northern Health Authority lifted 13 of the 49 boil water advisories that had been in effect for more than 18 months.
    • The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority reduced the number of systems on advisory by more than 10 per cent in both 2007/08 and 2008/09.
    • The Vancouver Island Health Authority reduced the number of advisories by 34 per cent in 2007/08 and by 13 per cent in 2008/09.
    • The Interior Health Authority has made no explicit commitment to reducing the number of systems on advisory, but has created a boil water notice remediation working group and has shifted resources to prioritize inspection of systems under advisory.
• The Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport has approved two new laboratories to provide water testing in remote areas (Recommendation 17).
• All the regional health authorities are now making their sampling data and inspection results publicly available (Recommendations 22 and 24).
• The Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport has begun to develop a small water systems strategy with the Sustainable Infrastructure Society and other stakeholders, and has taken steps to enable regional health authorities to identify all the small systems in their regions (Recommendations 29.1 and 31).
• The Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport has worked with the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to ensure that health authorities are notified when small water systems are created or licensed, and has created an addendum to the Drinking Water Officers’ Guide to facilitate the identification of small systems (Recommendations 29.1 and 31).