NEIWPCC works with federal, state, and local officials across the Northeast on Source Water Protection. One of the tools we created is a Source Water Protection Toolkit: “Water Today…Water Tomorrow? Protecting Drinking Water Sources in Your Community.”
The 2004 Source Water Protection Toolkit helps educate, train, and further inform municipal water professionals and passionate community members about information and tools available to manage and protect drinking water supply on a local level. The guide includes several short case studies from local communities and specific strategies for action to protect source water. This manual focuses on the following five key areas of vulnerability identified in Northeast state Source Water Assessments:
Navigating land use regulation is essential to protecting water supplies. While there are a variety of federal and state requirements and programs that address water quality issues, the day-to-day decisions associated with land use and resource protection are made by municipal officials—planning and zoning board members, conservation commissioners, wetlands commissioners, health officers, town sanitarians, and zoning boards of appeal.
Petroleum storage tanks are common across the Northeast and present a threat to the regions drinking water. Leaking fuel storage tanks allow for the release of gasoline and other petroleum products into the soil and groundwater. To address this threat, the identification of abandoned or leaking storage tanks in source protection areas can inform the development of management practices to protect water quality.
For more information see NEIWPCC’s Underground Storage Tanks program.
On-site wastewater treatment systems that are outdated or unmonitored can lead to the introduction of nitrate, nutrients, and microbial contamination to drinking water sources. However, these systems can be managed to protect water resources with proper oversight and requirements for planning, siting, design, installation, operation, monitoring, and maintenance.
For more information see NEIWPCC’s Onsite (Decentralized) Wastewater Systems program.
The manufacturing, purchasing, storing, using, generating, and discarding of chemical products and wastes pose varying degrees of risk to human health and the environment. To ensure drinking water is protected, communities must consider the siting and management of hazardous materials in source water protection areas.
Urbanization which replaces vegetation with buildings, driveways, parking lots, roads, and sidewalks reduces natural infiltration. This increases stormwater runoff which washes over impervious surfaces and carries pesticides, fertilizers, oils, road salt, litter and other debris, sediment, heavy metals, bacteria, and other pathogenic organisms into drinking water sources. Local governments can combat this effect with management practices that treat or manage runoff quantity and quality and target environmentally sensitive areas.
For more information see NEIWPCC’s stormwater program.
Download the 2004 Source Water Protection Toolkit, “Water Today…Water Tomorrow? Protecting Drinking Water Sources in Your Community.”
NEIWPCC is in the process of updating and adding new information to our Source Water Protection Toolkit for municipal officials. For more information please contact Ian Dulin.
