Assessment Report
The Source Protection Committee is busy developing the Assessment Report, due to the Minister of the Environment in mid-2010. A proposed draft will be available here for comment.
What are Assessment Reports?
In order to properly protect drinking water, we need to understand what is going on in the surrounding watershed - both above ground as surface water and below ground as groundwater. It is also important to understand how and where surface water and groundwater interact as these are vulnerable areas that need special protection.
An Assessment Report looks at an entire watershed, and the factors influencing the quality and amount of water (quantity) found there. Assessment Reports are a key requirement of the Clean Water Act, involve technical components and include information such as the physical characteristics of the land, land uses, where drinking water sources are located, how much water is being used and how much is available for future uses, where vulnerable water source areas are located, what threats and issues already compromise drinking water sources and what threatens drinking water sources from overuse and contamination.
Assessment Reports will provide Source Protection Committees with information that will help determine how best to protect the quality and amount of their local water resources. Assessment Reports will be the basis for developing Source Protection Plans and making local policy decisions for protecting drinking water quality and quantity.
What are the kinds of things that are defined as a threat?
Click here to read the List of Prescribed Drinking Threats.
