First Nations On-Reserve Source Water Protection Plan

What is Source Water?

Source water is untreated water from groundwater or surface water sources that supplies potable water for human consumption or contact.

What is Source Water Protection?

Source water protection, an important component of water management in Canada and elsewhere, is about preventing contaminants from reaching water sources by using a variety of management actions. Protecting water at the source is an important means of preventing human illnesses. In addition, protecting water at the source helps to protect ecosystems and local economies. It is many times less expensive to protect a water source from contamination than it is to remediate it after contamination.

The Multi-Barrier Approach to Safe Drinking Water

Source water protection represents a vital barrier in the protection of water supplies. Some of the other key barriers include drinking water treatment such as chlorination and filtration, maintenance of the water distribution system, testing and monitoring drinking water quality, and emergency planning (Figure 1). Together, these barriers are referred to as the "multi-barrier" approach to safe drinking water. The multi-barrier approach is really a system of redundancies that allows a drinking water system to avoid failure should a single barrier fail. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) defines the multi-barrier approach as an integrated system of procedures, processes and tools that collectively prevent or reduce the contamination of drinking water from "source-to-tap" in order to reduce risks to public health.

Source water protection is the first barrier, and perhaps most important barrier, in the multi-barrier approach and seeks to minimize the risk of water contamination at the source. Source water protection alone will not ensure a safe supply of drinking water in your community. It is important to follow all the barriers as outlined above. But without source water protection, the potential for contamination of the drinking water supply will certainly increase. The development and implementation of a source water protection plan, which is the focus of this document, should be the critical first step in any overarching water safety plan.

"The first barrier to the contamination of drinking water involves
protecting the sources of drinking water."

Figure 1: Multi-Barrier Approach

1^st Barrier: Source Water Protection
2^nd Barrier: Water Treatment Technology
3^rd Barrier: Distribution System Maintenance
4^th Barrier: Water Quality Monitoring, and Testing
5^th Barrier: Emergency Response Planning

What is a Source Water Protection Plan?

A source water protection plan (SWPP) is a document aimed at documenting how to protect source water quality and quantity. An SWPP is a systematic and organized assessment of contamination sources and pathways linked to human activity and natural processes that occur in a watershed. Based on this inventory, the SWPP identifies and prioritizes management actions to mitigate or reduce water contamination risks to an acceptable level.

"In order to protect drinking water quality and quantity, governments, organizations and communities are designing and adapting source water protection plans. A source water protection plan is a management strategy designed to minimize the impacts that human activities and natural events have on water sources. Such a plan should take a comprehensive ecosystem approach to water management, recognizing the need for clean drinking water, sustainable services for other human uses, and protecting the integrity of ecosystems."

How to Use This Document

This On-Reserve Source Water Protection Guide and Template (the Guide) is provided to First Nations wanting to develop their own community-based SWPP. The Guide is designed to provide step-by-step guidance to First Nations as they develop their SWPP. It is built around a generic SWPP template, provided in Appendix A, which proposes a standard structure for the plan. The template provides pre-written text and a series of tables that First Nations are invited to complete with their own community-specific information. Reference to this Guide, which provides necessary background and explanations, will assist in this process.

Types of Water Sources

Source water is the natural, untreated raw water found in aquifers and surface waters that are the source of drinking water. Source water contained in surface water supplies includes water found in lakes, rivers and other water streams. Groundwater is another source of raw water. Groundwater is water found beneath the earth's surface. The term "groundwater under the direct influence of surface water", or "GUDI" is often used to refer to a groundwater source that is located near enough to surface waters to receive direct surface water recharge. Everything is connected!

"The close relationship between surface and groundwater means that one cannot be affected in isolation of the other. If a water source becomes contaminated, there is a good possibility that the pollutants will eventually make their way into, and potentially contaminate, another water source."

Sources of Contamination

Both natural and human factors influence the quality of a water source. Where they exist, the nature and human-generated risks to source water present difficult challenges to the water treatment plant and may impact human and environmental health.

Water contamination from natural factors. Natural factors may contribute to drinking water contamination if left unchecked. Wildlife, for example, contains microorganisms such as bacteria, parasites and viruses that may cause diseases in humans. Ongoing changes to the natural environment such as wildfire, storm events, flooding and erosion can also introduce risk to source waters. Natural factors affecting water quality are often unpredictable and may occur very suddenly. For example, a severe rain storm may cause stream bank erosion and introduce sediments into source water, raising turbidity (cloudiness). Naturally occurring landslides may also impact water quality by adding debris and soil material causing high turbidity in the water. Human activity, such as forestry, urbanization, mining, and agriculture may exacerbate these natural conditions.

Water contamination from human activities. The quality of source water may be negatively impacted by past and present land use activities that introduce a risk to human and environmental health. Land use activities, including agriculture, may introduce pesticides and nutrients into water sources. Many residential activities also introduce potential risks to source water such as domestic animals, sewage disposal systems, landfills, lawn care, road networks, road salts, personal care products, pharmaceuticals and abandoned residential wells. Commercial and industrial activities add additional risks in the form of waste products, hazardous goods transportation, toxic by-products, dry cleaning wastes, car wash wastewater, fuel storage leaks, etc. Past industrial activity such as railroad routes, aging oil tanks, mine tailings, and other early industry may also contribute to water quality degradation. Figure 2 illustrates contamination pathways from human activity.

Figure 2: Human Activities Affecting Source Water

In the context of developing an SWPP, water contamination that results from human activities is of greater interest because this type of contamination is the one over which the community has the most control. For this reason, let's take a closer look at those human-related factors to help facilitate their identification in the local watershed during the development of the SWPP. Human-related factors contributing to pollution are often divided into two categories: point source and non-point source pollution.

Point source pollution. Point source pollution is pollution that can be traced to a fixed point such as an effluent pipe, a smokestack, or a leaking fuel tank. Point source pollution enters the environment at a specific place from an identifiable source. A point source of pollution is something that you can "point" your finger toward, such as a sewage outfall pipe. Figure 3 below illustrates point source pollution originating from a landfill where leachate contaminates groundwater, which then feeds downstream source water. Other examples of point source pollution that you might need to consider for your SWPP include but are not restricted to:

• industrial point discharges, as well as spills and leaks of industrial chemicals;
• municipal wastewater effluents;
• landfill site leachate;
• wastes from existing and abandoned mining sites;
• on-site septic systems; and
• leaking underground oil and gas storage tanks.

Figure 3: Point Source Pollution: Contaminants from Landfill Sites

Non-point source pollution. Non-point source pollution is pollution that cannot be traced to a fixed point such as recreation activity, roads, and urban runoff. Non-point source pollution is more difficult to identify and a much trickier problem to address in terms of land management practices to reduce contamination of source waters. Non-point sources of pollution come from multiple areas. These are sources you cannot exactly point your finger towards. Non-point sources are generally the result of water running over land that picks up natural and human-made pollutants and deposits these pollutants into surface waters or into groundwater through infiltration. Figure 4 illustrates non-point source pollution originating from agricultural runoff, which contaminates groundwater. Agricultural runoff can contain oil, grease, fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria and nutrients from livestock and manure. Other examples of non-point source pollution that you might need to consider for your SWPP include but are not restricted to:

• urban runoff from buildings, streets and sidewalks that carry sediment, nutrients, bacteria, oil, metals, chemicals, pesticides, road salts, pet droppings and litter;
• bacterial and petroleum products from recreational boating; and
• acid precipitation and other forms of air pollution that fall into surface waters and onto the land.

Figure 4: Non-Point Source Pollution: Agricultural Runoff

In Figure 4, non-point source pollution from a large agricultural area is disbursed over the landscape. Eventually, the contaminants from this agricultural activity enter source water at multiple points. These contaminants reduce the quality of source water, possibly to dangerous levels.

Types of Drinking Water Contaminants

Throughout this Guide, there is reference to drinking water contamination and the need to protect source waters against contaminants. The following provides basic information on the types of contaminants that originate from source contamination and are commonly found in untreated water. This section also describes typical contamination pathways, which can be useful when it comes to planning source protection efforts aimed at preventing contaminants from entering water sources.

There are five main types of drinking water contaminants: physical, microbiological, inorganic, organic and radioactive.

Overview and Scope of the Procedure

The on-reserve SWPP supported by this Guide follows a five-stage process with the goal of producing a watershed assessment that includes the ranking of risks to the source water, identifying management actions to reduce those risks, and an implementation strategy to deliver on those management actions. The five stages are illustrated in Figure 5. In summary, the stages are:

• Stage 1: Establish an SWPP Working Committee
• Stage 2: Complete a Source Water Risk Assessment
• Stage 3: Identify Management Actions to address potential risks to your source water
• Stage 4: Develop an Implementation Strategy
• Stage 5: Review and update your SWPP approximately every 5 years

Figure 5: Source Water Protection Plan Process

Importance of taking a watershed approach to the protection of drinking water supplies. However, at this time, and to initiate local plan-making, its scope focuses on on-reserve source water protection planning. The source water protection plan developed from this Guide and the management actions arising from it are meant to be specific to on-reserve land and water areas. However, this should not limit the scope of First Nations inquiry only to on-reserve risks to source water. Potential contaminant threats that are off reserve, and of concern to the First Nation, should also be identified and recorded. In this way, potential risks that are off-reserve can be flagged in the plan for future consideration and action. In all cases, the First Nation is encouraged to enter discussion with other stakeholders and adjacent land owners off reserve to develop working relationships to address any potential risks to on-reserve source water.

In other words, the purpose of this Guide is to facilitate the undertaking of on-reserve source water protection planning while encouraging the First Nation to participate, where possible, in watershed-scale planning. If there is a major concern posing a risk to on-reserve source water, then the First Nation should make this issue a priority in their SWPP and commence dialogue with off-reserve stakeholders.

Role of the Working Committee.

The Working Committee will oversee the process of developing the SWPP. The Working Committee will lead a locally driven, multi-stakeholder, science-based process to protect on-reserve drinking water sources while promoting water stewardship in the community. During development of the SWPP, the Working Committee will hold meetings, undertake field inspections, receive reports, and meet with community members.

Appointment of Working Committee Members

Working Committee membership will ideally be broad and inclusive to include multiple perspectives and world views on water and the environment. Elders will be critical to the success of any on-reserve SWPP because they bring aboriginal traditional knowledge (ATK) about the watershed that is probably not documented anywhere. The incorporation of ATK, where appropriate for your First Nation, will enrich the source water protection plan. Historical, traditional, and ceremonial teaching of water should be recognized in the plan along with Western-science teachings. For example, a traditional celebration of clean water is a reminder of the importance of clean water and the purpose of doing source water protection planning. Youth and Elder engagement in such activities serves a role in both environmental education and traditional knowledge. Guiding principles for those serving on your Working Committee include trust, two-way communication, commitment, and honesty.

In Stage 1, members of the Working Committee need to be listed in a table for reason of transparency and openness. In addition, this list allows for easy reference in the future when SWPP gets reviewed and updated. Also, the list of members in Table 1 might be useful to track participants who may eventually serve on a future Working Committee when the plan is reviewed. Working Committee members may need to be consulted for information and details relating to the original plan. Table 1 provides a sample list and contacts for the Working Committee members appointed by the First Nation to serve on the SWPP.

Working Committee Meetings

The development of the SWPP will require regular meetings of the Working Committee followed by at least one Open House meeting in the community. The date, location and purpose of these meetings and events will be reported in Table 2. After each meeting, Table 2 should be updated in order to keep a complete record of events for the public and for the Working Committee. The total number of Working Committee meetings should be recorded in the SWPP. Additional information that cannot be included in Table 2 such as maps, documents, water quality reports, well logs, etc., but are of relevance to the SWPP should be retained in a working file along with the agenda and minutes of each meeting. A sample summary of the Working Committee meetings is presented in Table 2 for ease of reference.

The Working Committee's recommendations will form the basis of the SWPP and will be presented to the community for comment and discussion in at least one Open House session in the community. The purpose of the Open House meeting is to receive public feedback from the community on the content of the draft SWPP. The date of this Open House will also be reported in the SWPP. The SWPP should reference the date and location of the public Open House as well as the means by which the community was notified of the Open House, such as community posters, door to door flyers, public health clinic, school notices, local radio, newsletter, etc.

Ongoing Communication

It will be essential for the Working Committee to receive input from the community after the Open House using a comment sheet, email or community link to the SWPP website hosted by the First Nation. Either way, every effort should be made to address comments from the public respecting the draft SWPP prior to its finalization. The Working Committee will be at the centre of the planning process. A successful SWPP will require time commitment, teamwork, and attention to detail. Take time to ensure that Stage 1 of the SWPP gets off on the right foot!

Sub-stage 2.1: Delineation of Water Sources and Systems

Stage 2 begins with an overview of the on-reserve portion(s) of the watershed(s) from which drinking water is drawn in your community, as well as the systems that collect that water, treat it, and distribute it to community users. The goal of this phase is to delineate the water sources, identify drinking water systems, and to record this information on a map.

Source delineation, Source delineation refers to the process of drawing the boundaries of a watershed on a map. This can easily be done by using a topographic map, which shows elevations (and therefore hills and slopes), and figuring out which portions of land on the reserve feed the water streams when surface runoff occurs during and after a rainfall event. Once this is done, the Working Committee should prepare a map that clearly shows the watershed delineations as well as all watercourses and their source. The SWPP map should be developed as an appendix to the final SWPP.

Mapping of source protection areas.

In support of source delineation and other watershed features incorporated on the SWPP map, it is a valuable exercise to also indicate on this map the likely protection areas associated with the water sources. A source protection area represents a zone or perimeter of influence around a water intake or a wellhead, where eventual contaminants are likely to negatively impact the quality of water. Another way to look at it, from an SWPP standpoint, is that drawing source protection areas on the SWPP map may put to light and make visually evident the interaction between potential contamination sources (Sub-stage 2.3) and water intake zones, and may also help targeting actual protection measures (Stage 4) where they can have the biggest impact.

Ideally, the identification of source protection areas should be informed by hydrological and hydrogeological studies. However, those can get quite complex and expensive. Nevertheless, some simple rules of thumb and assumptions can be applied as part of an SWPP, which can still result in substantial benefits to water quality. For example, some regulations in Ontario prohibit the deposit of waste within 50 meters of a wellhead. This criterion could be used in an SWPP to map source protection areas around wells.

Once this work is done, it will become clear which parts of the watershed are located on reserve and which parts of it could be impacted by surrounding land use activities. The following explanations and figures might also help you to develop source protection areas for your SWPP.

What is a Wellhead Protection Area?

A wellhead is the physical structure of the well above the ground. A wellhead protection area is the area surrounding the wellhead through which contaminants can move into the well. The various zones that make up a wellhead protection area are based on how long it would take a contaminant to get into the well. This is illustrated in Figure 6.

• 100 metre area: The area where the risk to the well is highest.
• 2 year time of travel: In the second ring, bacteria and viruses from human and animal waste are a concern.
• 5 year time of travel: Biological contaminants are less of a concern in the third ring but chemical pollutants are a concern.
• 25 year time of travel: The most persistent and hazardous pollutants remain a concern.

Figure 6: Wellhead Protection Area

What is an Intake Protection Zone?

Intake Protection Zones are the areas of land and water that are upstream of a water intake. In this area, special care must be taken in the use and handling of potential contaminants. This is illustrated in Figure 7.

• Intake Protection Zone 1 (IPZ-1) is the area considered the most vulnerable to any contaminant of concern.
• Intake Protection Zone 2 (IPZ-2) is considered high risk as any contaminant that is spilled in this zone has a high probability of reaching the intake within 2 hours and adversely affecting the water quality.

Figure 7: Intake Protection Zone

Sub-stage 2.2: Description of Drinking Water Systems

This sub-stage requires the Working Committee to expand on information collected in Sub-Stage 2.1 and gather detailed information on the community's drinking water systems. Information on groundwater systems should be compiled using Table 3A and information on drinking water systems that use surface water should be compiled using Table 3B. The Working Committee should rely on existing sources of information to complete these tables. Possible sources of information could include, but are not restricted to, the Band Office, Public Health office, Elder knowledge, technical reports, water treatment plant operators, Circuit Riders, local knowledge, and direct measurement. Tables 3A and 3B below contain sample text. Equivalent blank tables to be filled for your SWPP are provided in Appendix A.

Sub-stage 2.3: Inventory and Description of Potential Contamination Sources

While Sub-stage 2.1 required the mapping of water sources and other on-reserve watershed features such as reserve boundaries and dominant land use activities, Sub-section 2.3 aims at using the SWPP map (to be provided as an Appendix to the SWPP) to think through and identify all potential contamination sources.

The Working Committee, in consultation with the community, will provide a contaminant source inventory of all on-reserve land uses and activities with potential to degrade water quality. This inventory needs to be listed in Table 4A and shown on the SWPP map. Potential contamination sources to consider include:

• Climate change
• Erosion, flooding and other natural factors
• Wastewater treatment plant and sewage outfall locations
• Sewage lagoons
• Landfills and other waste deposits
• Agriculture
• Fuel storage
• Housing, industry and commercial uses, etc.
• Any other known or perceived land use impacts that may affect source water quality

If desired, the Working Committee may also provide an inventory of off-reserve land uses and activities of concern with potential to degrade on-reserve water quality. This inventory may be listed in Table 4B and shown on the SWPP map.

Background information on water sources and contamination pathways presented in Section 2 (Background) can be useful to identify the contamination sources:

• point source (contamination from a specific point, e.g., effluent pipe);
• non-point source (contamination from a broad area, e.g., road run-off); and
• natural factors such as erosion or natural flooding.

In particular, information and figures of Section 2 describing point source and non-point source pollution, as well as the information provided on the contaminants and their pathways can support this exercise.

Using the format shown in Table 5, the Working Committee will further document potential contamination sources by noting contaminant source, land owner, distance to source water, contamination of concern, and transport mechanism for each of point source, non-point source and natural source of contaminant. There is no need to present contamination sources in any particular order at this point; the next sub-stages will deal with the assessment and ranking of the contamination sources.

Sub-stage 2.4: Source Water Risk Assessment

Building on the previous sub-sections, which described and mapped the location of all potential contamination sources, in Sub-section 2.4 the Working Committee will now quantify the human health risks associated with each of the contamination sources. A risk assessment is a technique that allows for any given human health risk to be assigned a relative magnitude against other risks. Using this numeric scale to assess the relative magnitude of each potential risk, the Working Committee is to rank the risks from highest to lowest (Sub-Stage 2.5) and then to prioritize risk management actions aimed at reducing those risks (Stage 3).

The risk assessment exercise of Sub-Stage 2.4 simply consists in taking each of the contamination sources listed in Table 5 and assigning them a "Likelihood" score and an "Impact" level score. The resulting risk magnitude (or risk assessment score) will be determined by multiplying the "Likelihood" by the "Impact." To do this and complete the risk assessment, the Working Committee needs to follow three simple steps. These steps are described below.

Sub-stage 2.5: Risk Ranking

Using the risk analysis matrix (Table 8), the Working Committee can rank (or prioritize) each of the risks associated with contamination sources. The ranking of those risks may be organized in Table 9 from highest to lowest. This process will provide useful information to be shared with the community in the Open House.

At this point in the SWPP process, the Working Committee will have a complete list of known risks to source water quality and related risk implications. Table 9A will list the risk rankings from highest (25) to lowest (1). This is a 25 point ranking system. But bear in mind: these are relative values having no direct meaning; rather, they have a relative value that allows for the ranking of one risk against that of another. The ranking process is only meant to enable the prioritization of management actions to address those risks.

Low rankings, perhaps 1 to 5, may represent risks which the Working Committee and First Nation community can tolerate. Higher risk rankings, say 10 to 25, may be important enough to trigger immediate attention to be addressed in ranked order. The Working Committee will decide where to set the tolerance for acceptable and not acceptable risk when it comes to determining management actions and implementation prioritization (Stage 4).

If desired, the Working Committee may also identify those off-reserve activities that pose a risk to source water, such as upstream urban development, industrial mineral extraction, or other. These activities may be listed with a risk ranking in Table 9B.

The following stage, Stage 3, addresses on-reserve management actions necessary to eliminate or reduce the risks identified in the source water risk assessment.

4.1 Water Quality Monitoring Program

Water quality monitoring provides baseline information to report changes in water quality over time at any location. A water quality program that targets specific areas of known concern across the community is encouraged. Community-based monitoring (implies community residents becoming involved in water monitoring), record keeping and information sharing is also encouraged. As a minimum, raw water quality should continue to be closely monitored at the water treatment plant to record and report changes to water quality over time.

It is difficult to determine the effectiveness of local source water protection efforts unless a record of water quality is kept. Tracking the effectiveness of protection efforts lets a community know if they are making improvements and allows the source protection plan to adapt to new information and changing conditions.

4.2 Communication Program

An SWPP communication program has two purposes. The first is to inform the community-at-large of the on-reserve SWPP. This could be achieved through school-based classroom activities to educate youth on source water protection. Other ways to communicate the SWPP to the community and also to external stakeholders include: local newspapers, bill-stuffers, flyers, posters, website and radio. The second purpose of an SWPP communication plan is to implement specific management actions within the plan: providing advice to households, industry and businesses on best management practices (BMPs) to protect source water will be an important part of SWPP implementation. This is also an opportunity to promote traditional knowledge on the subject of water by engaging Elders with all community members, especially youth.

5.1 Update Working Committee Membership

The first stage of any plan review would involve an update of the Working Committee membership. Ideally some members from the earlier Working Committee would resume as members to maintain plan content history and plan-making process knowledge.

5.2 Invite Watershed Stakeholders

During the earliest stages of developing or reviewing a plan, the Working Committee should attempt to make contact with all relevant stakeholders with an interest in land use activities that may impact source water quality or quantity. These stakeholders may include off-reserve groups, industry, government agencies or land owners. The goal from the outset is always to build as much information as possible about factors influencing on-reserve source water.

5.3 Update On-Reserve Source Water Assessment

If not done as part of the initial SWPP, the Working Committee should eventually consider sources of off-reserve contamination as part of SWPP updates. The Working Committee may engage with other off-reserve watershed committees to build working relationships that would facilitate information sharing. The Working Committee will also revisit the on-reserve land use inventory, update the water system inventory and recalibrate, if necessary, the likelihood and impact scores and risk ranking for all land uses and potential contaminants.

5.4 Review Water Monitoring

A monitoring program, or community-based water monitoring program, should be designed to provide feedback to the Working Committee on water quality and quantity. This information would then help inform decisions on the success of specific management actions and the need to make adjustments to management actions and therefore to update the SWPP accordingly.

5.5 Monitor Plan Implementation

The SWPP review process undertaken in Stage 5 should examine the rate of implementation of management actions. This process should be designed to identify capacity needs to help advance plan implementation. Financial, human, technical and other forms of capacity building may be identified in this process that could help advance implementation of management actions.

FOREWORD

Water is essential to all life. The risk to human health and to the natural environment from the contamination of water sources is a concern to

<insert First Nation name here>.

As a result, the

<insert First Nation name here>

has developed this on-reserve Source Water Protection Plan (SWPP) to protect drinking water sources from harmful contamination and to provide a healthy environment.

Source water is untreated water from groundwater or surface water sources that supplies drinking water for human consumption. Source water protection is a vital first step in the protection of water supplies.

The Working Committee adopted a five stage process to guide this On-Reserve Source Water Protection Plan (see Figure 1).

Figure 8: On-Reserve Source Water Protection Plan

This SWPP recognizes the importance of taking a watershed scale approach to the protection of drinking water supplies. Although the Working Committee was aware of the larger watershed scale context for this plan, this document focuses on land and water areas that are deemed to be "on-reserve." Off-reserve potential contaminants or land use activities that are of concern to the Working Committee may be recorded in this plan either to be addressed as part of current scope of activities, or to be flagged for future consideration.

STAGE 1: Establish an On-Reserve Working Committee

(insert First Nation name)

appointed members to the

(insert First Nation name)

On-Reserve Source Water Protection Plan (SWPP) Working Committee (the Working Committee) to lead in the development of this on-reserve source water protection plan. Table 1 provides contact information for the Working Committee members.

(Insert paragraph length description; include known history, traditional knowledge, physical, chemical, biological properties of the source water, reliability of supply, climate change effects, and any known, or perceived land use impacts)

During the development of this On-Reserve SWPP the Working Committee held a total of

<insert number>

meetings to discuss various topics and to visit specific parts of the community. The Working Committee's recommendations were incorporated into this SWPP and presented to the community for comment and discussion on

<insert date> in the context of a public Open House meeting.

A summary of the Working Committee meetings is presented below in Table 2.

The community members were notified of and invited to an Open House to comment on a draft of this SWPP. The Open House was held at

<insert location>

on

<insert date>.

Feedback from the Open House was considered for incorporation into the final draft of this SWPP.

STAGE 2: Source Water Risk Assessment

Stage 2 of the SWPP provides an overview of the on-reserve water system, drinking water service area, source protection planning area, land uses and potential water contaminants, human health risks and management actions to reduce these risks.

STAGE 3: Identify Risk Management Actions

Upon completion of the on-reserve source water assessment (Stage 2), the Working Committee proceeded to identify management actions to address identified potential risks.

In response to the risk ranking (Table 9A), the Working Committee has identified on-reserve management actions for each of the identified risks with the goal to eliminate, or at least reduce, these risks. Table 10A provides a list of existing measures and proposed measures as identified by the Working Committee in consultation with the community to help reduce risk levels.

In response to the risk ranking (Table 9B), the Working Committee has also identified off-reserve management actions for consideration with watershed-level stakeholders. Table 10B provides a list of existing measures and proposed measures as identified by the Working Committee in consultation with the community to help reduce risk levels.

STAGE 4: Develop Implementation Strategy

In response to the management actions that were identified previously in Stage 3, the Working Committee has developed an Implementation Strategy outlining the necessary stakeholders and timelines.

Details concerning the necessary stakeholders and implementation timelines have been identified by the Working Committee in Stage 4 and listed in Table 11A.

STAGE 5: Source Water Protection Plan Review and Update

On a five-year cycle, the Working Committee will undertake a full review of the on-reserve SWPP. This review will commence with the appointment of a Working Committee followed by Stages 2 through 4 revisions. While some aspects of the SWPP may not change, the Working Committee will be open to new membership and any revisions that may occur to the source water assessment (Stage 2) and the development of risk management actions (Stage 3). As a result, any revisions may cause revision to the implementation strategy (Stage 4).