Drinking Water Sources - Protection Zones

Polygon features showing various zones of protection around drinking water system intakes/wellheads. A drinking water system is any domestic system servicing anything other than a single-family dwelling, as defined in the Drinking Water Protection Act. Zone of protection is a broad term that represents a wide variety of areas as they have been delineated in their corresponding report. The methods and processes used to delineate these zones vary based on several factors including, but not limited to, population, vulnerability, hydrologic/hydrogeologic parameters, etc. For the use of this dataset, the term Protection Zone means that protection measures should be considered and/or implemented in these areas due to the importance of these areas supplying drinking water to their water system users. Protection Zone does not mean that protection measures have been implemented in these areas, nor that protection measures are not required beyond the boundary of these areas. This is one of three Drinking Water Sources datasets (along with the DWS - Intakes/Wellheads points dataset, and DWS - Source Areas polygons dataset). Note: these polygons have unique Protection Zone IDs used to relate them to the Intakes/Wellhead points.