They are called Water Safety Plans and are the European protocols for the control of all phases of the production and distribution chain of drinking water. Covered in Directive 1787/2015, they require member states to comply with them as soon as possible.
Hera has therefore signed a collaboration agreement with the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) to apply complete Water Safety Plans to two of its aqueduct systems in the two-year period 2017-2018. In this way it will be possible to acquire the methodology and skills envisaged in the framework of the new provisions, so as to then be able to extend the Water Safety Plans to all the managed aqueduct systems.
The topic will be the subject of a conference dedicated to sector experts, which will be held at the multi-utility's Bologna office on Wednesday 21 June, in the presence of the Group's top management, as well as institutions and organizations involved in the project.
For some time now, the Hera Group has had plant structures, analysis laboratories and monitoring systems that operate every day to allow over 3,6 million citizens served to be able to drink tap water at home with absolute peace of mind. Guaranteed by over 2.000 checks a day, tap water is therefore at the center of Hera's attention, which has dedicated a specific report to it, "In good waters", now in its eighth edition and published annually to report in detail all the aspects of this fundamental service.
Furthermore, for some years now, the Group has been collaborating with the Emilia-Romagna Region and Arpae for the development of an application methodology based on risk analysis for the definition of control plans. In this context, a contribution was also provided to the Guidelines on Water Safety Plans published by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in 2014 (ISTISAN Report 14/21).
“For us – declares Franco Fogacci, Hera Group Water Director – guaranteeing quality drinking water has always been an absolute imperative and for this reason we are in absolute harmony with the guidelines outlined in the European Directive. The Water Safety Plans - continues Fogacci - constitute an important challenge for all operators in the sector, who will have to be good at structuring themselves in such a way as to concretely and punctually implement them. Indeed, I think that a corporate experience like Hera's - concludes the Multiutility's Water Director - can deploy decisive skills and resources to encourage processes of this type, not only translating them into reality in the area served but also providing important and useful examples for other local areas".
Luca Lucentini, Director of the Internal Water Hygiene Department of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, declares: “Hera's willingness to implement the water safety plans highlights the company's constant trend towards improvement and the trust in an instrument that can ensure a strengthening of prevention even in particularly advanced systems in terms of management and controls. The involvement of ISS, together with the regional and local health authorities of the team, is an opportunity for us to expand the range of experimentation of the Safety Plans in particularly complex hydro-drinking supply chains as regards the sources of supply and potential sources of pressure as well as for the extension and articulation of networks. The results will therefore be able to provide a significant contribution to the regulatory development on the implementation and approval of the Plans, at the national level which the Ministry of Health is actively coordinating".
Adriana Giannini, Head of the Collective Prevention and Public Health Service of the Emilia-Romagna Region declares: "The agreement is a further step forward in a process that the Department of Health Policies has already undertaken since 2012, financing and coordinating a series of projects aimed at improving the quality of drinking water, through the experimentation of a control system according to the principles of the Water Safety Plans. The studies conducted have led to the development of a statistical model which, applied to aqueducts, allows for the identification of the most stable and the most critical areas, in order to arrive at a "risk categorization" and, consequently, determine adequate control measures. The results obtained so far have been made possible thanks to the integration of the skills of the participants in the project group (USL, Arpae, Hera and Ireti companies) and the support of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. This collaboration is essential to encourage the process of change underway on the control of drinking water for the purpose of ever greater protection of consumer health".
The Director General of Arpae, Giuseppe Bortone, declares: "Arpae is pleased to be a partner and promoter of the project for the implementation of the Water Safety Plans in Emilia-Romagna, participating both with its own planning capacity, data processing, in-depth knowledge of statistics history of the quality of drinking water, both with its own network of analysis laboratories that daily bring safety and reliable data regarding the state of the water supplied by the aqueducts. The Agency therefore confirms its vocation to contribute to the improvement of production processes while respecting the protection of the environment and the health of the populations”.
