pubilc health

The aim of this activity is for you to begin to focus your thinking (and writing) on a water utility that you are familiar with. A secondary aim is to check that you can submit an Assignment on the Flinders Learning Online (FLO) site. You will gain access to this site in ‘O’ Week, so you will have a couple of weeks to prepare your responses for this activity.
Imagine that you are an employee of a water utility. In this role you are required to answer questions from the general public on behalf of the organisation. Imagine that the list below represents the questions that the public has generated over the last month.
Prepare your answers to the questions (below) in a Word document (1 paragraph per answer). Save this Word document to your computer. Submit your Word document as an attachment below. Your work will be private, visible only to you and our teaching staff.
At this stage, I am not expecting in depth responses. If you don’t know the answer to a question now, make a note to contact the relevant person, then update your work when you find out the answer.
This activity is adapted from page 445 of the topic textbook, Safe Drinking Water: Lessons from Recent Outbreaks in Affluent Nations.
Answer these questions about the water utility that you are most familiar with –
1. What is the raw water source for our drinking water?
2. What are the main threats of contamination to that raw water source?
3. What are the seasonal trends in raw water quality and flow that affect water safety?
4. What influence can unusual weather events have on raw water quality?
5. How is the raw water treated to assure consistently safe water?
6. Who is in charge of water quality and safety (i.e. management)?
7. Who monitors the water quality routinely (i.e. laboratories)? Who do they report to? What checks are maintained to ensure they are accurate?
8. Who regulates our water (i.e. regulatory agencies)? What training do individual regulatory personal have? How often do they check our water quality? Are their checks unannounced? Who verifies that they know what is needed to assure safe water?
9. Is there a third party audit of the entire water operation? What is its mandate? How frequently is this done? Who are the audit findings reported to?
10. What information on water quality and operational performance is available to consumers?
11. How does the consumer access this information?
12. How does the water provider respond to consumer complaints?