Preparing a drinking water safety plan
Assessing and managing risks across your water supply through drinking water safety planning.
Drinking water safety plan (DWSP)
Preparing a drinking water safety plan is a risk management process that aims to ensure a safe, reliable and resilient supply of drinking water to your consumers.
Your DWSP records the hazards and risks to your drinking water supply and how you will manage them to ensure that drinking water is safe. Your plan must:
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be proportionate to the scale and complexity of, and the risks that relate to, your drinking water supply
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identify any hazards that relate to your drinking water supply
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assess any risks associated with those hazards
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identify how those risks will be managed, controlled, or eliminated to ensure that the water you supply is safe and complies with the legislative requirements of the Water Services Act 2021
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identify how the DWSP will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and how its implementation will be amended, if necessary, to ensure that the drinking water you supply is safe and complies with legislative requirements
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identify how your drinking water supply will be monitored to ensure that drinking water is safe and complies with legislative requirements
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include procedures to verify that your DWSP is working effectively
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include a multi-barrier approach to drinking water safety that will be implemented as part of the DWSP
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include a source water risk management plan if required
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if your supply includes reticulation, require, and provide for the use of, residual disinfection in the supply unless an exemption is obtained
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identify how you will meet your duty as a supplier to ensure that a sufficient quantity of drinking water is provided
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identify how you will respond to events and emergencies in relation to your supply
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comply with the relevant requirements of the Drinking Water Quality Assurance Rules (the Rules).
Source water risk management plan
A source water risk management plan is part of your DWSP, unless your drinking water supply arrangement doesn’t have a source (for example, water carriers who fill tankers from water from another drinking water supply rather than abstracting water directly from a water body). It sets out how hazards and risks to source water will be managed. To develop a plan, you will need to engage with local authorities to understand the risks to your water source.
A source water risk management plan must:
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identify any hazards that relate to the source water, including emerging or potential hazards
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assess any risks that are associated with those hazards
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identify how those risks will be managed, controlled, monitored, or eliminated as part of a DWSP
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have regard to any values identified by local authorities under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (made under the Resource Management Act 1991) that relate to a freshwater body that you use as a source of your drinking water supply.
Guidance and templates for small-medium supplies
We have prepared a set of DWSP templates and guidance for drinking water supplies serving populations of up to 500 people. These reflect the relative scale, complexity and risk of different water supplies, and incorporate source water risk management planning.
It is not mandatory to use these templates. You may submit your DWSP in a different format from that prepared by the Water Services Authority – Taumata Arowai. This is acceptable so long as the DWSP addresses each of the elements listed in ‘Drinking water safety plan (DWSP)’ above. We are committed to enhancing our guidance on DWSPs over time. If you choose to use one of our templates, you can provide feedback by emailing opssupport@taumataarowai.govt.nz.
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Category |
Population threshold |
DWSP guidance |
DWSP template |
|
Small supply |
26 – 100 |
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Medium supply |
101 – 500 |
General guidance for drinking water safety planning
This guide on drinking water safety planning covers the importance of risk management in the supply of safe drinking water and provides examples of risk management approaches that can be used as part of the drinking water safety planning process.
This guide for source water risk management planning covers the importance of protecting drinking water at its source and describes what you should consider when carrying out risk management planning for source water.
This guide will help you upload your DWSP to Hinekōrakooutbound.
When do I need to have submitted a DWSP by?
Drinking water supply owners must provide a DWSP unless they have:
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an Acceptable Solution in place
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a supply for less than 26 people
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a general exemption.
New supply owners must register and provide a drinking water safety plan to us before they supply water to community members. The owner provides the drinking water safety plan by uploading it in Hinekōrako.
We have revised the Drinking Water Standards and published new Drinking Water Quality Assurance Rules.
Unregistered suppliers – you’ve got plenty of time to get registered
If you’re a drinking water supplier with a supply that wasn’t registered with the Ministry of Health before 15 November 2021, you have up until:
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15 November 2028 to register your supply with us
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15 November 2030 to meet all legal responsibilities for that supply, for supplies that serve more than 25 people, that includes completing a DWSP.
New drinking water supplies – register before you start supplying
If you are commissioning a new drinking water supply, you must register the supply with Taumata Arowai and provide a DWSP before you start to supply drinking water to consumers.
See the guidance and templates for small supplies above or the guidance below.
Water carriers
If you’re starting a new water carrier business, you need to submit a DWSP to us before you begin to transport water.
If you are a water carrier that was supplying water prior to 15 November 2021 but were not registered with the Ministry of Health, you were required to provide a DWSP by November 2022.
We have prepared a DWSP guide and a template for water carriers.
A water carrier service is a drinking water supplier that transports drinking water (other than by reticulation). They can supply water to consumers or another drinking water supplier.
A water carrier service may use its own registered water carrier supply or another drinking water supplier’s registered drinking water supply.
A water carrier’s arrangements may involve two separate drinking water supplies:
- Water carrier supply: the drinking water supply owned and used by a water carrier to obtain drinking water, prior to transport to consumers or other drinking water suppliers.
- Water carrier service: the infrastructure used to transport and deliver drinking water to consumers or other drinking water suppliers.
A water carrier service that uses its own supply must register the water carrier supply and also register as a water carrier by submitting two separate applications, one for its supply and one for its water carrier service.
For more information see the water carrier page.