Sean Myers
Woodard & Curran
41 Hutchins Drive
Portland, ME 04102

Using ArcPad and GPS to Verify and Identify Potential Sources of Contamination in Support of a Wellhead Protection Program

The Acton Water District in Acton, Massachusetts provides water to approximately 18,000 customers in the Town of Acton. In total the District has 18 wells, configured in an arrangement of 5 wellfields and two individual wells.

Through a grant provided by the Massachusetts DEP Drinking Water Program, the District conducted an assessment of “high risk” land use activities within the entire Zone II areas for all of the wells maintained by the District. The assessment involved the compilation of existing data and field efforts to verify and/or edit the information that was compiled.

All information that was collected for the project was organized into a GIS database. Certain data layers were loaded onto a Compaq hand-held units with the ArcPad software program. By connecting the hand-held to a GPS unit, field crews could navigate to features identified as “high risk” land uses, verify the location of the land use, and edit descriptive information if necessary. Customized forms were used for easy data entry and verification. Using the ArcPad with the customized forms saved considerable time transcribing information from the field into a database and minimized data input errors.