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The 1996 Amendments to Section 1453 of the Safe Drinking Water Act require the states to establish and implement a Source Water Assessment Program. Source water is the water taken from rivers, reservoirs, or wells for use as public drinking water. Source water assessment is intended to provide a strong basis for developing, implementing, and improving a state's source water protection plan. This program requires individual states to delineate protection areas for drinking water intakes, identify and inventory significant contaminants in the protection areas, and determine the susceptibility of public water supply systems to the contaminants released within the protection areas. The USEPA is assisting the states in conducting source water assessment by identifying potential sources of data and pointing to methods for assessing source waters. A document was developed providing guidance to states, municipalities, and public water utilities for assessing source waters using geographic information system (GIS) technology. The GIS platforms can be used to organize, analyze, and manipulate available data and generate new data for source water protection areas, as well as provide capabilities for presenting the data to the public in various forms, including maps and tables. For more information on this effort, visit the website at http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/wswrd/gis.html. To access directly from this website, click on downloads on the navigation bar.

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