Generally for developing a Water Safety Plan a team of experts is necessary that includes the competence needed to analyse the hazards, assess the risks they pose as well as the performance of the supply system in controlling them, to define new control measures or suggest improvements of existing ones, and to assess how effectively the control measures in place are being monitored and managed.

This team therefore should be multi-disciplinary. It should include knowledge of the specific supply system from catchment to consumer in order to ascertain that hazards and potentially occurring hazardous events can be comprehensively analysed. This ranges from technical operators to senior managers.

The full support of the leading management is essential for acceptance of the Water Safety Plan, both for the work input necessary to develop it and for its subsequent day-to-day use in practice. A team leader should be designated who drives the process.

External experts on specific issues can be included as needed.

Specifically for cyanotoxins the team would include expertise in:

· phytoplankton ecology to understand the likelihood of bloom occurrence and causes of eutrophication,

· nutrient dynamics to set adequate targets for nutrient concentrations and nutrient loading

· drinking-water treatment to set performance targets that ensure cyanotoxin removal

· potentially also toxicology for assessing health risks if elevated cyanotoxin concentrations cannot be excluded with certainty.

This is important, as many of the questions to address in assessing your system and its specific risk of cyanotoxin occurrence and break-through require quite specific expertise. This decision support tool can outline the expertise you will wish to get on board, but it cannot replace the experts.

è Document the members of your Water Safety Plan team, potentially differentiating between those who supported different parts of your risk and system assessment, e.g. in the worksheet provided on the starting page of this decision support tool.

è continue to step 2 - describe the water supply / recreational system