Drinking water source protection : a review of environmental factors affecting community water supplies

This paper presents a review of the literature on the protection of drinking water sources for small and medium size water supply systems. It studies the main linkages between the water sources, catchment areas, natural environmental factors, user communities and non-users. After defining the problem, the factors affecting small community water supplies are discussed. These factors include micro-biological and chemical pollution as well as insufficient and decreasing water yields. This is followed by a description of those factors which affect both small and large water systems, i.e.: industrial pollution, agrochemicals, sewage discharge, over-extraction of groundwater and land-use changes in large catchment areas. Attention is then focused on developing country experiences in the protection and improvement of water sources by risk assessment, appropriate technologies, community participation, and legislation. The paper concludes with recommendations for the improvement of source protection in developing countries and for further studies.

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