Delivering safe drinking water. When the buck stops with you…
WHEN MANAGING RISK IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
If delivering safe drinking water to consumers is ultimately your responsibility, you’ve got to know what you don’t know – and you need to know it now. And when that live, real-time knowledge comes at an annual cost per household of less than 50 cents* – you need to ask yourself why you haven’t already implemented this safety net within your council or utility. To quote the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines:
“Safe drinking water is essential to sustain life. Every effort needs to be taken to ensure that drinking water suppliers provide consumers with water that is safe to use.”
But think about it… could you really stand up in front of your residents, and say that EVERY effort has been taken to ensure they’re being provided with safe drinking water? Is your team monitoring water quality in real-time, as it travels from the catchment through your infrastructure and into residents’ homes?
WHY MONITOR WITH REAL-TIME TECHNOLOGY?
When the cost of prevention is cents per household, versus the costs of consumer illness, and possibly the cost of lives-lost and ensuing litigation, monitoring your drinking water quality, as it travels from catchment to consumer, is a no-brainer. Did you know that throughout your drinking water distribution system there are MANY opportunities for negative impacts on water quality? The list is long and includes:
- Intrusion of contaminants from pressure transients
- Contamination due to cross connections and backflow
- Deteriorating buried infrastructure
- Permeation and leaching
- Nitrification
- Microbial growth and biofilms
- Ingress at finished water storage facilities
- Water age
As distribution systems cover large areas and represent most of the physical infrastructure for drinking water supply, real-time and reliable water quality information is required.
KEEP ON THE FRONT FOOT AND STOP CHASING YOUR TAIL
With manual, intermittent monitoring, you will always be steps behind having real, current information on the standard of your drinking water. In fact, your first inkling to an issue in your delivery network may end up coming from your consumers. For example, becoming aware of sub-standard drinking water quality through social media channels does not reflect a functioning product surveillance system – and it most definitely does not foster consumer confidence in the quality of your drinking-water management. You need to capture events BEFORE they become issues – protecting the health of your community. The only way to do this is with 24 x 7 automated monitoring and information generation around a broad range of water quality parameters, enabling rapid and targeted responses to water quality events.
THE HEALTH OF YOUR COMMUNITY IS IN YOUR HANDS
When it is your responsibility to deliver drinking water that has not been contaminated by disease causing microorganisms, pesticides or heavy metals, you want to ensure you have done everything you reasonably can, to mitigate any risk at an acceptable price-point.
By rolling-out an automated water quality monitoring system within your drinking water supply network, you can feel confident you have fulfilled your responsibility by taking every effort to ensure the delivery of safe, quality, drinking water to your community.
