New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, New Jersey Geological and Water SurveyA Well Head Protection Area (WHPA) is both an area modeled around an unconfined Public Community Water Supply (PCWS) well in New Jersey that delineates the horizontal extent of groundwater captured by a well pumping at a specific rate over two-, five-, and twelve-year periods of time for unconfined wells and a fifty foot radius delineated around each confined PCWS well (This corresponds to the water purveyor controlled wellhead area as defined in the Safe Drinking Water Regulations (see NJAC 7:10-11.7(b)1)). WHPA delineations are created in compliance to the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1986 and 1996 as part of the Source Water Area Protection Program (SWAP). The delineations are the first step in defining the sources of water to a public supply well. Within these areas, potential contamination will be assessed and appropriate monitoring will be undertaken as subsequent phases of the NJDEP SWAP. The WHPAs were previously defined using line and polygon coordinate files and the Arc/INFO Generate command. Individual WHPAs were then combined into county and statewide coverages with the Arc/INFO Union command. The WHPAs are currently created using the same coordinate files using a Python-based feature creation script producing an ArcGIS geodatabase feature. The individual features are then combined using ArcGIS merge command. Previous WHPA coverages were updated to features also and combined into a statewide WHPA feature. The WHPA feature is distributed as either an ArcGIS shapefile or a layerpack file. The 2011 and earlier WHPA delineation methods are described in "Guideline for Delineation of Well Head Protection Areas in New Jersey" available as a download at http://www.state.nj.us/dep/njgs/whpaguide.pdf. Due to security consideration, the PCWS well features are not available for direct download but may be requested from the NJDEP.ArcGIS DynamicMapLayerhttps://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/d9fead9109f84c71997e07dba8502bea_25engNew Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's (NJDEP) Bureau of GISPublicWell Head Protection Areas For Public Community Water Supply Wells In New Jersey [New Jersey]Web servicesNew JerseyLast Modified: 2025-11-24