Introduction

A source water assessment is intended to provide a basis for developing, implementing, and improving a source water protection program. These programs require administrative agencies to delineate assessment areas for water intake identification, and inventory significant contaminants within the assessment areas. These assessments often focus environmental or public health programs developed by federal, state, and local governments, as well as, citizens within an assessment area.

The purpose for this project was to collect information on the location and characteristics of PWS intakes in the state of Arkansas that provide public drinking water and the location and characteristics of Potential Sources of Contamination (PSOC) that are in their immediate vicinity. CAST was primarily responsible for the development of base data that were used by the USGS and ADH to assess the potential for contamination to the Public Water Systems.

Due to the large number of public water systems and potential PSOCs, it would be cost and time prohibitive to map all of these data without the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies and existing geospatial data. The underlying goal of this effort is to develop a set of data that can serve as a basis for future assessment and analysis of the relative potential for contamination of these resources. The current work is seen as the first step in a long-term program that will involve extensive fieldwork and continued data validation.

Project Study Area

The project area was defined by the state boundary of Arkansas as defined by the 1:100,000 scale Digital Line Graph (DLG) data distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Although the assessment areas of the 1500 + public water intakes did not completely cover the surface of the State, CAST collected and organized the GIS data for the entire State of Arkansas.