Clean Water Fund, the Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water and the Clean Water Network have partnered in an exciting project to promote drinking water source protection. Under the 1996 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, states are required to complete Source Water Assessments by 2003. Under the Source Water Assessment Program all water systems in the US are required to compile an inventory of all actual and potential sources of pollution, rank the vulnerability of the drinking water source to the pollution and recommend protection efforts for the source water area. The challenge for communities concerned about clean and safe water is to move beyond the assessments to real protection of drinking water sources. The project will provide citizen leaders with information, tools, training and support to develop models for source water protection activities.

Key activities of the project include:

Training Conferences: Regional and State Training Conferences will train community leaders and activists on resources available for source water protection and how to use them. The conferences will provide training on integrating water laws and programs to maximize effectiveness, and will include hands-on exercises aimed at jump-starting model local protection efforts. Conference participants will leave with valuable tools, new contacts and plans for action. The Introduction to Drinking Water Regulation and Source Water Protection PowerPoint Presentation is available for download. Follow-Up and Technical Assistance: National and regional teams will follow up with conference participants and provide for technical assistance to the extent possible for follow-up activities on the local, state and regional level. Some funding will be available for in-depth local training and technical assistance around specialized topics like regulatory programs (i.e. TMDL's) and GIS mapping.

Source Water Stewardship Guide and Toolkit: The Source Water Stewardship Guide is a printed and on line guide (coming soon) to using Source Water Assessments to promote protection of drinking water sources. The on-line Toolkit will be available on this site in early 2004 and will help citizens match local water challenges with programs to address them. View Introduction where you may download the entire Source Water Stewardship Guide. Assistance Fund: Funding is available through the Assistance Fund (you may view the Assistance Fund Guidelines as a Rich Text or Adobe Acrobat document) for mini-grants of up to $2000 to qualifying organizations for source water protection activities. These will be especially geared toward: Implementing projects modeled in the training conferences Achieving increased focus on source water protection by a specific utility Further dissemination of the Source Water Stewardship Guide and of the skills acquired in the training conferences. Organizations must be 501C-3 or be sponsored by a 501C-3 to receive the mini-grants. Click Here to view descriptions of projects funded by the Assistance Fund.

For More Information Contact:

Lynn Thorp, Clean Water Fund;
The Clean Water Network; or
Julia Krall, Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water