Green Guide: Volunteer and Help Protect Your Drinking Water Supply with a Source Water Protection Inventory

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "source water protection involves preventing the pollution of the groundwater, lakes, rivers and streams that serve as sources of drinking water for local communities." This is an important task, as our lives depend on this valuable and finite resource. Preventing pollutants from entering your water supply will help to avoid illnesses caused by contamination.

As an AmeriCorps volunteer, I helped communities conduct source water assessments as the beginning of their source water protection plans. A source water assessment involves multiple steps, which are most easily accomplished as a team. If you are looking for an opportunity for you, or your organization, to serve your community, contact the city and find out if it needs assistance updating the source water protection plan. You might have to contact a few departments to find out who is responsible for water resources planning. Typically, it is the city manager, water department, city engineer or planning department. If there is no plan, offer your services to get the source water protection assessment started. You might want to start toward the top of the city hall food chain (e.g. City Manager, City Council, Mayor, etc. etc.).

The following are the steps followed when doing a source water assessment:

Create a map of the source area for your water supply. Many states will create these maps for communities. Contact your state's department of environmental quality to see if this service is available. The EPA also offers tools to help you create your own map.

Conduct a contaminant source inventory. This is where multiple volunteers and city workers will be needed! In the second step, you will canvas the source water area in order to locate on a map where any potential contaminant sources are located. I recommend collecting GPS readings at each location if possible, so they can be easily mapped with a computer. You will also provide a brief description of the potential contaminant source. Examples include dry cleaners, gas stations and agricultural fields.

Determine how susceptible your community's drinking water supply is to contamination.

This link will give you all the information and contacts you need to get started with a source water assessment.

Read more on source water protection at the EPA's website.