Research and analysis

Drinking water protected areas: challenges for the water environment

Current and future issues for drinking waters, with a review of current measures to address the challenges.

• From: Environment Agency
• Published: 22 October 2021
• Last updated: 1 December 2025
  Show all updates

  1. 1 December 2025

     Replaced the Drinking water protected areas report with the 2025 version.

  2. 15 August 2022

     As part of river basin management planning, we reviewed the surface water drinking water protected area (DrWPA) database during April to June 2022 and identified corrections, omissions and removals of sites registered. As a result, the number of surface water DrWPAs reduced from 463 to 450. Safeguard zone (SgZ) numbers were corrected to 148 SgZs covering 240 surface water DrWPAs. The quoted statistics and charts for surface water DrWPAs were therefore updated throughout the challenges document to reflect the June 2022 confirmed surface water DrWPA and SgZ numbers. The main edits were in section 2.2 to refresh which substances are causing the most risk for surface water DrWPAs, and figures 2, 4, 6 and 8 were updated. Groundwater DrWPAs remain unchanged from the October 2021 document. But some graphs were updated to improve clarity.

  3. 22 October 2021

     First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Drinking water protected areas: challenges for the water environment

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Details

This report describes:

• a range of current issues for drinking water protected areas
• current measures to address the challenges
• future challenges and how to meet them