Real World Shades of Gray in a Black and White Regulatory World

摘要

This paper is an update and follow-on from the paper titled "Resolving Roles & Risk in a Rapidly Changing Regulatory Environment" that was presented at a brief early bird session in Washington in 2001. It described the Engineers' Reports that every municipal water system in Ontario had to produce by May 2001. At the time of the Washington presentation, the Reports had been submitted but not reviewed. The review of those Reports is now being completed.rnThe utilities were mandated by regulation to complete the reports by a specific date and are paying for the Reports. The work had to be done by a registered professional engineer who is not an employee of the owner or the operator. The engineer had to sign a declaration that the Regulator could rely on the accuracy of the Report. The Regulator had the final say in the acceptability of the Reports, and based on them, issued new and consolidated "Certificates of Approval" for all the water systems involved.rnThis paper provides an update on the final outcomes of the process from a regulatory, utility and engineer's perspective. It describes the technical and policy issues that arose, and how all the parties worked within an already defined regulatory mandate to deal with them.rnRegulation is generally "black and white" and the real world is shades of gray - so the challenge in many cases was deciding which shades of gray were black and which were white. This was achieved using a variety of traditional and progressive mechanisms that involved fundamental decisions on impacts on small and large systems.