Measurement of the Potential Benefits of Public Health Performance Appraisals and Water System Planning

摘要

In 1997 the National Research Council published Safe Water from Every Tap (1997), a report that included many recommendations intended to improve the performance of small public water systems. This paper uses the Virginia Small Water System survey to assess the value of requiring a Public Health Performance Appraisal (PHPA) of all small water systems in the state, one of the major recommendations of the report. The survey focuses on the actual performance of Virginia small water systems in the areas of system knowledge, source knowledge, future planning, financial management, preventive maintenance, operations, and emergency preparedness. The findings suggest that indeed PHPAs may help small water systems improve in several areas of weakness. Additionally, specific areas of the PHPA, particularly operator certification and water system planning, are shown to have many positive benefits in more than one of these areas.