Potential Public Water Supply Area (PPWSA)

The layer previously referred to as Priority Land Acquisition Assessment Project (PLAAP) will now be referred to as Potential Public Water Supply Areas (PPWSA). PPWSAs are locations that may be suitable for future development of drinking water supplies. The process to identify these areas started with creating a GIS layer of only pervious land on Cape Cod using regional datasets, from which surrounding land uses incompatible with wellhead placement were removed (e.g., landfills, hazardous waste sites or contaminant plumes, cemeteries, golf courses, airports). The remaining land was overlain with an 11.5 ac hexagon layer, the approximate size of a wellhead and its protective buffer. The resultant PPWSA layer is therefore hex based, not parcel based, and represents approximate locations where a well could be placed and have natural resource protection. It is important to note that this analysis does not include subsurface investigation needed to evaluate the specific water yielding characteristics of a site for use as a water supply. The PPWSA layer is based on a consistent set of regional resource information to identify constraints that limit the suitability of each area for water supply development. Originally created in February 1999. Edited in March 2006. Edited in November 2008. Edited in September 2025.