Environmental Services

City of Ruston volunteered to participate in the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) Wellhead Protection Program in September 2000.  LDEQ designed this program to assist Louisiana communities in protecting their drinking water.  The goal of the program is to increase public awareness on the importance of protecting drinking water sources.  The program was also designed to educate local governments on actions they can take to protect their drinking water sources such as adopting drinking water protection ordinances and the use of the Source Water Assessment Program (SWAP) assessments in planning and zoning. 

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) maps and assesses all community water wells, surface water intakes, and potential sources of contamination (PSOCs) in the state through the (SWAP).  PSOCs may include gas stations, dry cleaners or other facilities that sell, store, use or dispose of chemicals.  Chemicals, if not handled properly, have the potential to contaminate our ground water.  The SWAP assessments also consider other factors, such as well depth or age of surface water intake that can increase the susceptibility of a drinking water source to contamination.

LDEQ issues a final report to each system assessed through the SWAP program.  The report ranks each system’s susceptibility to contamination.