Drinking Water Sources - Source Areas

Polygon features representing the geographical extent of a source area that contributes water to a drinking water system. A drinking water system is any domestic system servicing anything other than a single-family dwelling, as defined in the Drinking Water Protection Act. Source Area is a broad term used to describe any area that could potentially contribute water to the drinking water system; it does not mean that hydrologic analyses have been completed to determine likelihood of connectivity. These source areas most often represent the entire aquifer extent (for ground water systems) or the watershed upstream from the intake (for surface water systems). This is one of three Drinking Water Sources datasets (along with the DWS - Intakes/Wellheads points dataset, and DWS - Protection Zones polygons dataset). Note: these polygons have unique Source Areas IDs used to relate them to the Intakes/Wellhead points.