Drinking-Water Standards New Zealand Discussion Paper

New draft of Drinking-Water Standards New Zealand (DWSNZ) Discussion Paper
Date of publication: 31 October 2003
Submission closed on 30 November 2003

The new Drinking-Water Standards, drinking-water legislation and guidelines are progressing steadily towards their respective implementation dates.

The latest interim draft of DWSNZ 2004 is now available for comment. To ensure that the revision remains on schedule, comments are required before 30 November 2003.

This paper is the first of several that evaluates new information that has become available on drinking-water quality management, and widens the scope of the DWSNZ 2000 to include tankered water supplies and improves the way in which small supplies are covered.

New information being presented now includes:

UV disinfection
an approach for protozoa compliance based on the USEPA LT2ESWTR
material from the draft thirrd edition of the WHO Guidelines.

Material that is still being worked on, such as small water systems, will be available for comment in 2004.

A lot of the rationale for the new approach for protozoa compliance is described in the file 'New Approach to Handling Protozoa Criteria'. Some of the background material appears in the file 'Requirements for Cryptosporidium compliance'.

The draft Standards are in the files 'Overview of the Drinking-Water Standards', and 'Chemical Compliance'; note however, that it is really only 'Chemical Compliance' (Part 4) that has been addressed so far.

These two files include an indication where most changes have occurred since the 2000 Standards. Questions are posed in each section. Your comments on the issues raised are requested, which it is hoped will result in some helpful feedback.

We look forward to your responses. (The documents can be downloaded in PDF form from the bottom of this page.)

Expert Committee
The new Drinking-Water Standards and Guidelines are progressing steadily towards their respective implementation dates. An interim draft version of DSWNZ has just been released for comments/submissions. After these have been incorporated, and some additional sections included, the new version of DWSNZ will be ready to be reviewed by an expert committee.

This is the approach that was adopted for the 1995 and 2000 DWSNZ when about 24 people met to discuss the various technical issues.

Many of the 2000 Expert Committee on Drinking-Water Quality have moved on, so some replacements are required.

People who wish to nominate someone should contact Dr Michael Taylor (michael_taylor@moh.govt.nz). Please include a brief description of your nominee's areas of technical competence.

A team will then be selected to establish a balance between engineering, chemical, microbiological, operational, managerial and compliance skills.

Document availability

These documents are not available in hard copy. They are only available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF) below:

New approach to handling protozoa criteria

(PDF, 347 kB)

(Word, 167 kB)

Requirements for Cryptosporidium compliance

(PDF, 225 kB)

(Word, 140 kB)

Overview of the Drinking-Water Standards

(PDF, 722 kB)

(Word, 628 kB)

Chemical compliance

(PDF, 353 kB)

(Word, 295 kB)

These publications have been converted to Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). Here is a link to information on downloading and viewing PDFs.