PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS OF DRINKING WATER SUPPLY SYSTEMS: WHICH IS THE ROLE IN WATER SAFETY PLAN TO IMPROVE THE RISK MANAGEMENT

The water safety plan (WSP) approach is based on risk analysis of water contamination in a drinking water supply system (DWSS), from catchment to consumer, aimed at insuring the human health protection. In this paper, the performance assessment of DWSS, based on monitoring, process parameter control and experimental tests, has been developed as a tool for the process optimization and the WSP elaboration. Two case studies are reported: the pollutants considered in the raw water are parameters that can represent critical pollutants also reported in the revised Drinking Water Directive (DWD) 2020/2184. The methodological approach based on drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) performance assessment (with routine and intensive monitoring programmes), and on the experimental tests for process upgrading (such as the activated carbon test at lab scale), resulted to be very useful for the identification of new control measures in WSP. Moreover, this approach has a priority role for the validation of existing control measures and the definition of new control measures for risk reduction.