Safer drinking water for remote and Indigenous communities
Media release - 31 October 2011
Remote and Indigenous communities can look forward to cleaner, safer drinking water, thanks to an enhanced Community Water Planner tool released today.
The Community Water Planner is an online tool developed by the National Health and Medical Council in conjunction with the National Water Commission. It enables remote and Indigenous communities to generate water safety plans tailored to their community.
“The Community Water Planner provides a guide to all steps of drinking water production, from catchment to consumer,” said Murray Radcliffe, Acting General Manager of the Assessment and Policy Coordination Group at the National Water Commission.
“The Community Water Planner helps to ensure that regional and remote Indigenous communities better manage their water supplies to ensure clean, safe drinking water”
The CEO of the National Health and Medical Research Council, Professor Warwick Anderson said, “When the Community Water Planner was trialled in 21 Indigenous locations, fewer people experienced water-borne diseases.”
Better water quality in Indigenous communities will bring us one step closer to bridging the gap between the health of Indigenous and other Australians.”
The Community Water Planner includes information on preventing microbial, physical, chemical and radiological risks in drinking water. The National Water Commission developed the physical, chemical and radiological modules and provided funding to NHMRC to incorporate the original microbial focused tool into a web based application.
The online tool allows registered users to securely store the information they provide about their community’s water needs. Using this information, the tool generates a water safety plan which can be printed or updated online.