The assessment and planning provisions of the proposed Drinking Water Protection Plan provides flexibility for purveyors, consumers and local governments to respond to drinking water supply issues. However, enforceable standards will be needed to provide regulatory consistency at the provincial level and to ensure compliance with performance and prescriptive measures to protect drinking water. The terms standards, objectives, and guidelines are very similar and it is important to understand the differences. Guidelines and objectives are not directly enforceable but can be enforced indirectly by their inclusion in a specific permit, license, approval or order. Guidelines usually apply provincially or on a regional basis, while objectives usually refer to site-specific or local situations.
Standards are legally enforceable limits or prescriptions.
Not meeting a standard leads to a predetermined consequence, often enforcement. Water Quality Objectives are being established in community watersheds designated under the Forest Practices Code, and become legally enforceable standards under the Code once they are established. The province sets province-wide guidelines for pollutant limits and practices to protect water quality. Because there can be multiple sources of pollution, and many factors can affect pollution, province-wide water quality standards that specify a safe level for a contaminant can be difficult to devise. Site-specific standards are easier to devise and enforce because many of the confounding factors can be accounted for at the local level.