West Virginia Rivers September 2025
Did you know the best way to ensure you can trust what comes out of your tap is to protect the sources of drinking water — our rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, and groundwater? That’s the focus of Source Water Protection Week, a national effort to raise awareness about keeping drinking water safe.
About 85% of people in the U.S. get their drinking water from community water systems, while the rest rely on private wells, cisterns, or springs. West Virginians follow a similar pattern, and because of our state’s reliance on surface water, protecting source water is especially important here at home.
After a chemical used to clean coal leaked from an Above-ground Storage Tank into the Elk River in 2014, West Virginia took action by requiring public water systems to create Source Water Protection Plans (SWPPs). These plans identify potential threats, outline strategies for responding to contamination events, and detail how communities will be kept safe and informed. Plans are regularly updated, and community input is vital in shaping them.
Current challenges like PFAS contamination, fossil fuel development, chemical industry pollution, and even new pressures from climate change and large industrial water users make source water protection more urgent than ever.
In the September e-news edition, we’re putting a focus on protecting our water at the source and ways to take action with WV Rivers Coalition.
Guardians of the West Fork Watershed 