The constantly expanding diversity of contaminants
from changing land use, coupled with greater
pollutant loads and fewer natural barriers, has
made treatment more challenging and expensive and
increased the chances that contaminants will reach our
taps. The 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking
Water Act required that states conduct a Source Water
Assessment for every public water supply in the country,
reflecting a renewed national focus on source water
protection as a tool to prevent the contamination of
drinking water supplies. Although some resources were
provided to the states to conduct assessments, no
resources have been appropriated for protection strategy
implementation, neither have any mandates that
they occur been issued. Tools and resources are needed
to inform and motivate local and regional protection
efforts.
This article describes a successful process that
demonstrates how locally driven source water protection
efforts that leverage local, state, and federal
resources can lead to successful implementation of
protection strategies. This study highlights how water
supply managers can work with elected officials, landuse
planners, watershed associations, and others in
their source area to conduct geographic information
systems analyses, identify threats to supplies from land
use, and develop joint efforts to address those threats
through a variety of funding sources. Includes 19 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. 96 - No. 4 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 5.9 MB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 15 |
| Published : | 04/01/2004 |
