Updates to the Director's Directions: Minimum Requirements for Operational Plans

The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks is proposing updates to the Director’s Directions: Minimum Requirements for Operational Plans (the Director’s Directions).

The Director’s Directions set out the minimum requirements for preparation and content of operational plans that are developed for municipal residential drinking water systems. To learn more about how Ontario regulates municipal residential drinking water systems, visit municipal drinking water systems: licensing, registration and permits.

An operational plan is the documentation of a quality management system developed to conform to the requirements of Ontario’s Drinking Water Quality Management Standard (DWQMS).

The proposed updates will provide flexibility to organizations operating multiple connected municipal residential drinking water systems. Where these systems are operated as one, organizations will have the option to prepare a single operational plan (item 3.0.5 in the draft Director’s Directions). These systems will still have to meet all content requirements for operational plans and will continue to be subject to all other water safety and quality requirements for municipal drinking water systems.

Administrative updates to the Director’s Directions are also proposed that include:

• adjusting the version control requirements for operational plans to acknowledge that both controlled and uncontrolled copies may exist in either physical or electronic formats (item 3.3.1)
• clarifying requirements when an operating authority submits a copy of an operational plan to the ministry on behalf of the system owner (item 3.3.2)
• updating Schedule C to remove notes and include reference to the version of the form available in the Central Forms Repository: “Schedule C – Director’s Directions for Operational Plans (Subject System Description Form)”