Protecting Our Drinking Water
Source Water Protection Project
Protecting Connecticut’s drinking water supplies is essential to public health, watershed health, and community resilience. Through the Connecticut Source Water Protection Project (CSWPP), the Connecticut Council on Soil and Water Conservation and its partners advanced source water protection statewide through planning, outreach, and a major GIS innovation led by UConn CLEAR. CLEAR developed the project’s parcel prioritization tool, interactive map viewer, dashboard, and web resources, creating a powerful new system for identifying the lands that matter most for protecting Connecticut’s drinking water.
What Is Source Water Protection?
Source water protection focuses on safeguarding the land and water areas that supply public drinking water before contamination occurs. In Connecticut, that means identifying the watersheds, aquifer protection areas, and individual parcels that play an outsized role in protecting drinking water quality and quantity, then using that information to guide conservation planning, land protection, and technical and financial assistance.
What the Project Delivered
The project built up Connecticut’s capacity for source water protection in three major ways.
First, it created a statewide GIS-based parcel prioritization system to identify lands with the greatest value for protecting drinking water. The tool evaluated parcels in both drinking water watersheds and aquifer protection areas using multiple surface water and groundwater metrics, then made the results available through an interactive map viewer, dashboard, and supporting web pages so they can continue to be used over time.
Second, the project funded and completed two watershed-based plans:
- a comprehensive plan for the Farm River watershed in south central Connecticut, and
- an updated Little River watershed plan with a stronger focus on agriculture, water quality, and soil health.
These plans were designed to support future implementation projects and improve access to Farm Bill and other conservation funding.
Third, the project invested in training, outreach, and public engagement. Webinars, workshops, conference presentations, and Local Work Group meetings helped expand knowledge among conservation professionals, municipalities, utilities, nonprofits, farmers, and community members about source water protection challenges and opportunities in Connecticut.
The Sourcewater Protection Project, By the Numbers
Statewide Impact
The GIS tool is one of the project’s most significant long-term outcomes. It gives conservation partners a practical way to rank parcels in drinking water watersheds and aquifer protection areas based on their relative importance for source water protection. It also allows users to explore parcel-level data, query by location or attributes, view ranking metrics, and summarize parcel statistics by town. This helps agencies, land trusts, water utilities, municipalities, and conservation organizations make more informed decisions about protection priorities.
Watershed Planning in Action
In the Farm River watershed, the project brought together municipalities, agencies, nonprofits, utilities, and residents to develop a watershed-based plan that supports implementation of green infrastructure, stormwater improvements, and other water quality projects. The planning process also helped build a continuing implementation team and supported follow-on funding for projects in the watershed.
In the Little River watershed, the updated plan focused on agricultural nonpoint source pollution, detailed assessment of farming operations, and targeted outreach to producers, including small farms and homesteaders. The result is a stronger roadmap for improving water quality while supporting practical conservation on working lands.
Why This Matters
By combining statewide mapping, watershed planning, and outreach, the Source Water Protection Project created tools and partnerships that can continue to support drinking water protection well beyond the grant period. It gives Connecticut a stronger foundation for targeting conservation investments, engaging communities, and protecting the land and water resources that supply clean drinking water.