Ground Water Protection Council
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Key Message
Access to clean, safe drinking water is the essential ingredient to a
healthy and viable community. Severe human health, ecological, and
economic consequences follow from losses of current and future
drinking water sources—losses that can be prevented. The potential for
contamination of drinking water, coupled with the high cost of treating
water and locating and developing alternate water sources, makes it
imperative that federal, state, and local entities adopt and implement
effective strategies for long-term protection of drinking water sources.
Congress and USEPA have taken the first step in developing such
strategies by requiring assessments of all public water systems—termed
Source Water Assessment and Protection. To be most effective,
assessments and strategies must be based on an understanding of the
factors that affect water quality and quantity, including how surface
water interacts with ground water, how water quality factors into water
availability, and how the management of potential water contamination
involves everyone.
Our challenge is to ensure that both public and private sectors take ground water
resource protection into account in development plans, ordinances, public works
practices, construction practices, and other land-use decisions. Indeed, all citizens
share responsibility for source water protection.
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why source water protection matters to ground water...
All drinking water sources, both public and private, are vulnerable to
contamination from an array of human activities such as septic system discharges, waste-site
releases, underground storage system leaks, nonpoint-source pollution, and agricultural
chemicals. Without diligent attention to managing these potential sources of contamination,
our drinking water will come at a higher cost over time. This cost includes the increasing need
for water treatment, monitoring, remediation, finding alternate water supplies, providing bottled
water, consultants, staff time, and litigation. Source water protection is simpler, less expensive,
and more reliable over the long term.
Source Water: untreated water from rivers, streams,
lakes, or aquifers that is used to supply
public drinking water.
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Recommended Actions
To USEPA:
- Incorporate source water protection considerations into other programs at
the federal level (e.g., hazardous waste, underground injection control
[UIC], Clean Water Act) and allow for flexibility so that state programs can
do the same.
- Sustain a federal-level Source Water Protection program.
- Provide additional financial support and incentives for state and local
Source Water Protection programs.
- Integrate ground water value into Source Water Protection programs.
To State Agencies:
- Establish and sustain a statewide Source Water Protection program that
coordinates the activities of all agencies responsible for natural resources
and environmental protection programs so that they proactively address
potential source water impacts. This includes periodically evaluating the
effectiveness of current source water protection efforts. (See Elements of
an Effective State Source Water Protection Program, a joint Ground Water
Protection Council (GWPC) and Association of State Drinking Water
Administrators (ASDWA) document, October 2006.)
To Local Governments:
- Create, or participate in creating, a municipal watershed or regional-level
comprehensive Source Water Protection Plan that includes:
- Strategies for managing threats and protecting resources.
- A combination of voluntary and regulatory strategies.
- A long-term vision, short-term strategies, and measurable goals.
- A strategy for how to fund the activities in the plan.
- Coordinate land-use planning with source water protection plans, incorporate
source water protection as an element of the local comprehensive
plan, and integrate source water areas into land-use planning and zoning
regulations.
Photo: Paul Locke
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