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Publications—Fact Sheet 101–98

Source–Water Protection and Water–Quality Investigations in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Drinking–Water Supply System

By Marcus C. Waldron, Chip Norton, and Timothy W. D. MacDonald

U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 101–98


This report is available in Portable Document Format (PDF):

FS 101–98 (1,444 KB)  – 6 pages


Introduction

The Cambridge Water Department (CWD) supplies about 15 million gallons of water each day to more than 95,000 customers in the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most of this water is obtained from a system of reservoirs located in Cambridge and in parts of five other suburban–Boston communities. The drainage basin that contributes water to these reservoirs includes several potential sources of drinking–water contaminants, including major highways, secondary roads, areas of commercial and industrial development, and suburban residential tracts. The CWD is implementing a comprehensive Source–Water Protection Plan to ensure that the highest quality water is delivered to the treatment plant. A key element of this plan is a program that combines systematic monitoring of the drainage basin with detailed investigations of the effects of nonpoint–source contaminants, such as highway–deicing chemicals, nutrients, oxygen-demanding organic compounds, bacteria, and trace metals arising from stormwater runoff. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is working with the CWD and the Massachusetts Highway Department (MassHighway) to develop a better understanding of the sources, transport, and fate of many of these contaminants. This Fact Sheet describes source–water protection and water–quality investigations currently underway in the Cambridge drinking–water supply system. The investigations are designed to complement a national effort by the USGS to provide water suppliers and regulatory agencies with information on the vulnerability of water supplies and the movement and fate of source–water contaminants.

 


This report is available online in Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, it is available for free download from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Document Accessibility: Adobe Systems Incorporated has information about PDFs and the visually impaired. This information provides tools to help make PDF files accessible. These tools convert Adobe PDF documents into HTML or ASCII text, which then can be read by a number of common screen-reading programs that synthesize text as audible speech. In addition, an accessible version of Acrobat Reader 8.0 for Windows (English only), which contains support for screen readers, is available. These tools and the accessible reader may be obtained free from Adobe at Adobe Access.


Suggested Citation:
Waldron, M.C., Norton, C., and MacDonald, T.W.D., 1998, Source–Water Protection and Water–Quality Investigations in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Drinking–Water Supply System: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 101–98, 6 p.


For additional information write to:

Director,
USGS Massachusetts–Rhode Island Water Science Center
10 Bearfoot Road
Northborough, MA 01532

or visit our Web site at:
http://ma.water.usgs.gov



U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Persistent URL: https://pubs.water.usgs.gov/fs10198
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Last modified: Tuesday, 29-Nov-2016 18:09:48 EST
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