Passage of the 1986 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act indicated a renewal of national concern for maintaining or enhancing drinking water quality, in addition to requiring improvements in treatment, disinfection, and compliance monitoring,the surface Water Treatment Rule (SWTR) promulgated by the US Environmental Protection Agency places increased emphasis on source protection unfiltered surface water systems that wish to avoid filtration. For systems that face the prospect of con- structing or upgrading treatment and dis infection facilities, watershed protection programs can play a strong role in
maintaining or enhancing water quality and in providing cost-effective options to the application of advanced water treatment methods, Concurrent with new regulations and public demand that safety of drinking water supplies be ensured, urban devel- opment and other land use activities in once protected watersheds threaten the quality of the nation's water resources, The most effective way to ensure the long-term protection of water supplies is through land ownership by the watersup- plier and its cooperative public juris- dictions. However, relatively few water utilitiesown or otherwise control most or all of the land within their water supply watersheds. In areas that face develop ment pressure or contain highly produc- tive agricultural orforestland, the cost of acquiring land protect water supplies be prohibitive. This situation is par- ticularly common for smaller water systems,