Protecting Rural Karst Drinking Water Supplies Through Education

Since 1998, the WKU Technical Assistance Center for Water Quality has been working to provide assistance to rural drinking water providers in Kentucky. To improve public health within Kentucky, the Center’s Source Water Protection Program has developed an applied research program to identify strategies supporting an approach that assumes that the better the quality of source water when it reaches the treatment plant, the easier and cheaper is to treat. The roughly 50% of Kentucky underlain by karst aquifers present special challenges as these waters are especially vulnerable to contamination by agricultural land use, including bacteria, pesticides, and nutrients. Since land use is closely tied to groundwater quality in these areas, education about the functions of such systems is a powerful tool for protecting vulnerable drinking water sources. A key research area is thus to determine means to provide education to landowners, local government officials, and public about source water issues, and to determine how this compares in efficacy and cost-effectiveness when compared to other source water protection strategies. This poster describes the module Impact of Karst on Source Water Protection as an example. This has been designed as a workshop, but also includes printed materials and a website for wider dissemination. Subsections of the module include Concepts of Source Water Protection, Karst Landscapes and Aquifers, Karst Related Environmental Problems, Best Management Practices for Source Water Protection in Karst, GIS in Source Water Protection, and Partnerships for Source Water Protection