In your Indiana home, clean drinking water is only a turn of the handle away. But have you ever wondered where your drinking water comes from?
In order to effectively protect drinking water sources, you first need to understand what source water is and how it makes its way through local water systems and into your plumbing.
Indiana American Water is committed to source water protection to meet our mission of reliable, high-quality water services for all our customers. Read on to learn more from our experts about source water and simple activities aimed at protecting drinking water sources.
Understand Our Water Sources
Source water is another term for any water sources that provide water to public water systems, public drinking water supplies, and private wells.
It can come from a river, stream, lake, spring, aquifer, or even a reservoir. Source water takes the form of either surface water – water flowing on top of the land within a watershed – or groundwater, water that is stored underground in natural aquifers within the pore spaces of soil and rock.
Is Source Water Safe to Drink?
The simple answer is maybe – but that doesn’t mean you should go grab a glass from your local lake.
Water from these natural water sources can be contaminated with bacteria, parasites, viruses, and harmful pollutants. The quality of source water depends on the conditions of the body of water, as well as climate, topography, and land use. To ensure any water is safe to drink, it must first be treated within the standards set by local officials and public health groups.
Why is Protecting Sources of Drinking Water Important?
Source water can be compromised by contaminants that find their way into the water either naturally through the water cycle or are transported through the watershed. Materials that are flushed down your toilets or your home’s drains can also affect local water quality, and excess stormwater can pick up pollutants and combine with sewage when systems overflow, directly contaminating source water.
Source water protection directly correlates with the quality of your drinking water.
If a drinking water source is highly polluted or poor-quality, it increases your risk of exposure to contaminated water. Additionally, ensuring source water is properly protected can help reduce treatment costs and eliminate the need for complex treatments, making safe drinking water more accessible overall.
Ensuring healthy local waterways is also beneficial to wildlife as it results in healthier natural ecosystems. Cleaner bodies of water are also safer for recreational use such as swimming, fishing, boating, and other water sports. Most source water protection initiatives involve identifying risks to the public water supply as well as developing strategies to reduce those threats and maintain a safe source.
Source water protection isn’t just important, in many cases it’s also a legal requirement. Protecting source water used in the public water system helps meet standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state drinking water programs under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Community Effort: How to Protect Water Sources
While drinking water utilities, such as Indiana American Water, work tirelessly to treat and deliver safe, fresh drinking water to our customers, providing healthy water starts at the source.
While there are many official ways to help reduce the risks facing your water supplies, from material handling regulations to land use guidelines, our greatest source water protection resource is you. With an intentional effort from all Indiana utilities, businesses, and residents, we can protect sources more efficiently than ever before.
So, how can you start protecting water at home? Source water protection includes:
- Proper Material Handling & Disposal: Hazardous household waste including oils, paints, cleaners, and batteries, as well as pharmaceuticals, should never be dumped down your toilets or sink or storm drains. Instead, dispose of them safely at the applicable waste collection sites.
- Lawn Maintenance: Pet waste, lawn clippings, and litter can gather in your yard and be flushed into local waterways through the storm drain when it rains. Keep your lawn free of these harmful contaminants to help ensure they never reach water sources. Avoid using harmful fertilizers and pesticides and consider planting native plants to help prevent runoff as well.
- Automobile Upkeep: Cleaning your car at home in the driveway is a fun family activity, but it can be detrimental to source water when the chemicals you use, and dirt and oil you wash away travel through the storm drains. Use more natural cleaning methods when possible. Additionally, check for any oil leaks and use dry absorbent products to clean any accidental car spills rather than washing them down the sewers with water.
- Watershed Protection: Source water and local watersheds are tied together, as protecting your watershed can help improve the quality of source water. Check out our blog on tips to protect your local watershed or view an Indiana American Water Source Water Protection handout online to learn more.
Want to do more to protect source water, or not quite sure where to start? Be on the lookout for local events and volunteer activities related to water conservation and water quality protection. You could join a local stream cleaning event, participate in a household material collection drive, raise awareness through educational programs, support local water conservation legislation, or even organize your own clean-up efforts.
Contact Indiana American Water Today
Source water protection takes a village. Raising awareness and educating Indiana residents about the problem is at the forefront of the effort. Contact Indiana American Water today or visit our website for additional source water protection resources.