The safe drinking water amendments of 1996 placed a strong emphasis on the goal to establish a nationwide effort to protect drinking water sources. As part of that goal, the legislation provided for a preliminary assessment of drinking water sources and an inventory of surrounding adjacent land use (ALUs). This nationwide effort will result in the first comprehensive look at the nation's drinking water sources from an assessment perspective. One of the outcomes of this nationwide assessment will be information that public water systems (PWSs) can use to help determine appropriate monitoring frequencies and to protect their sources of drinking water. In conjunction with this nationwide effort, the primary goal of Arizona's Source Water Assessment Program (SWAP) is to benefit PWSs. SWAP results will be used to provide the basis to individually tailor monitoring requirements for PWSs and an encouragement to implement local source water protection programs. To develop an appropriate preliminary assessment program which will benefit local communities in developing source water protection programs. Arizona has involved, and will continue to involve, the public during the development and implementation phases of the SWAP. Arizona has formed technical and citizen advisory committees, as well as conducted statewide public meetings and hearings. -- Introduction-p. 4

The 1996 amendments to Section 1453 of the Safe Drinking Water Act require the states to establish and implement a Source Water Assessment Program (SWAP). Source water is the water taken from rivers, reservoirs, or wells for use as public drinking water. Source water assessment is intended to provide a strong basis for developing, implementing, and improving a state's source water protection plan. This program requires individual states to delineate protection areas for drinking water intakes, identify and inventory significant contaminants in the protection areas, and determine the susceptibility of public water supply systems to the contaminants released within the protection areas. SWAP can be used to focus environmental public health programs developed by federal, state, and local governments, as well as efforts of public water utilities and citizens, into a dydrologically defined geographic area. The Environmental Protection Agency is assisting the states in conducting source waster assessment by identifying potential sources of data and pointing to methods for assessing source waters. This report provides guidance to states, municipalities, and public water utilities for assessing source waters using geographic information system (GIS) technology. The GIS platforms can be used to organize, analyze, and manipulate available data and generate new data for source water protection areas, as well as provide capabilities for presenting the data to the public in various forms, including maps and tables. Included as appendices to this document are three case studies demonstrating the use of selected GIS-based software and hydrologic models to conduct hypothetical source water evaluations.