Source Water Protection A Brief Overview

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Source Water ProtectionA Brief Overview

• Eric Winiecki
• Environmental Protection Agency Region 10
• Office of Water and Watersheds
• Drinking Water Unit

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What is Source Water?

• Untreated water from streams, rivers, lakes,
  springs, and aquifers that is used as drinking
  water supply

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• Drinking water is vulnerable to contamination
• Source water must be protected
• To protect human health
• To avoid high treatment costs

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• Core principle of Source Water Protection
• it is unfair for communities to have to treat
  drinking water for anything other than naturally
  occurring pollutants

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Community Water Systems in R10

• 4330 Community Water Systems (CWS)
• 572 CWS are surface water systems
• 5,362,567 people drink water from the surface
  water systems
• 4,564,338 people drink water from ground water
  systems.

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Wellhead Protection Program

• 1986
• Protection of ground water sources
• Standard requirements
• Determine wellhead protection areas
• Identify potential contaminant sources within
  protection areas
• Plan to protect wellhead areas from
  contaminants, including contingency planning

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Source Water Assessments

• 1996
• Surface water and ground water
• State programs approved by EPA
• Standard requirements
• Delineate source water protection areas
• Identify potential contaminant sources
• Determine Susceptibility to contamination
• Communicate results publicly

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• Source Water Assessments are for the protection
  and benefit of public water systems
• Vision assessment results will inspire
  communities to protect source water

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• States are designing and implementing Protection
  Programs
• EPA Goal By 2011, 50 of Community Water
  Systems, and 62 of population served by those
  systems, will be substantially implementing
  source water protection plans

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EPA Support for SWP

• U.S. Forest Service/ Bureau of Land Management
  Outreach
• Funding Rural Water Association
• Internal Coordination
• Emergency Response
• Underground Injection Control (UIC)
• Underground Storage Tanks (UST)

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EPA Support (continued)

• Annual State Meetings
• Western States ground water strategy
• EPA Headquarters National-level initiatives
• Resource Web Sites
• Source Water Collaborative

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Source Water Collaborative

• Group of organizations pledging to protect source
  water
• EPA is an equal participant
• DHS, DEQ already working with Collaborative
  members in Oregon
• More groups will be added

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Why bother?

• Cost of dealing with a contaminated source can
  cost 27 times more than Source Water Protection
• 10 increase in watershed tree cover can result
  in a 20 decrease in drinking water treatment
  costs.

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SWP is Cheaper
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• Eric Winiecki
• [phone]
• winiecki.eric_at_epa.gov