Source Water Protection and PFAS Prevention
Municipal drinking water systems typically have source water protection programs—watershed management plans, protection zone ordinances, and pollution source monitoring—designed to prevent contamination of drinking water source waters. PFAS represents a new and challenging threat to these source protection programs, requiring significant adaptation to address a contaminant class with different properties than historically regulated source water pollutants.
PFAS Threats to Protected Watersheds
Traditional source water protection programs focus on agricultural runoff, septic systems, fuel storage, and direct industrial discharge. PFAS introduces new pathways: military base AFFF from beyond watershed boundaries reaching surface water through groundwater connectivity, atmospheric deposition from distant industrial sources, and biosolid application on agricultural land within watersheds.
Enhanced Monitoring for PFAS
Source water protection programs are expanding monitoring to include PFAS in intake water, tributary streams, and groundwater recharge areas. PFAS source tracking tools including compound fingerprinting—matching PFAS compound ratios in source water to known PFAS source signatures—can identify contamination pathways for targeted mitigation.
Prevention Through Land Use Authority
Utilities with source water protection ordinance authority are restricting new AFFF-using facilities, PFAS-containing biosolid application, and fluorochemical industrial operations within source protection zones. These preventive restrictions—when enforceable—provide more cost-effective long-term source protection than treatment-based responses to contamination after it occurs