Indiana Watersheds Used for Drinking Water

Mapped by County
The Map
Click on any county that contains at least part of a source water watershed (colored areas in the map at left) for a map of the drinking water watersheds in the county. These are the watersheds for  community water supply systems that provide drinking water from surface water sources (streams, rivers, or reservoirs).

Note: Watersheds for Lake Michigan (source water for Hammond, Lowell, Whiting, East Chicago, Indiana-American Northwest, and Michigan City) and the Ohio River (source water for Evansville) are so large that they are not included on these maps.

Why are these watersheds important?

These watershed areas can affect water that people drink. Activities within the watershed, such as the application of chemicals,  have the potential to enter the lake or river that supplies tap water for communities downstream. In areas of the state where no watersheds are shown, all communities use well water rather than surface water.

Viewing the county maps

When you click a county with a drinking water watershed, you will see an image (png format) of the county. These are sized fairly large, so you will need to either expand your browser window to see the entire county or scroll within the browser.
These maps were created by Dr. Jane Frankenberger, Purdue University Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, with GIS assistance from Huilan Luo and Oguz Gungor.

The Indiana Pesticide Watershed Work Group is working to promote pesticide stewardship, particularly to minimize atrazine loss in these watersheds. For more information see http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/SafeWater/PWWG or the following Extension publications:

PPP-66  Atrazine and Drinking Water: Understanding the Needs of Farmers and Citizens (8 pages, 1 MB)
PPP-67  Atrazine Use and Weed Management Strategies to Protect Surface Water Quality (16 pages, 13 MB)


For more information contact Jane Frankenberger (frankenb@purdue.edu)

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St. Joseph Starke Whitley Wabash Wells White Tippecanoe Warren Tipton Vermillion Wayne Union Shelby Vigo Sullivan Switzerland Scott Washington Warrick Spencer Vanderburgh Steuben La Porte Lake Porter Adams Benton De Kalb Elkhart Fountain Gibson Fulton Cass Carroll Grant Blackford Clinton Delaware Boone Fayette Clay Franklin Decatur Bartholomew Brown Dearborn Greene Daviess Clark Dubois Crawford Floyd Madison Miami Newton Noble Perry Pike Posey Randolph Rush Marshall Pulaski Montgomery Parke Marion Putnam Morgan Owen Monroe Ripley Ohio Martin Orange Harrison Hendricks Howard Jasper Jay Johnson Knox_ Kosciusko Lagrange Allen Huntington Hamilton Henry Hancock Jennings Jackson Lawrence Jefferson