Any federally-funded project in an area that could affect ground-water in a sole-source aquifer must be reviewed by the US EPA. This 'project review area' includes the aquifer's 'recharge zone' and it's 'stream-flow source zone'. The recharge zone is the area through which water recharges the aquifer. The source zone is the upstream area that contributes recharge water to the aquifer. The EPA sometimes modifies the project review areas as published in the Federal Register in order to better protect zone as originally published.
Most of New Jersey is covered by the seven SSAs and their project review areas. Descriptions of the SSAs can be found in Entity and Attribute information. This is based on notifications published in the Federal Register.
The order of chronological approval is as follows: 1.) Buried Valley SSA 2.) Ridgewood SSA 3.) Rockaway SSA 4.) Highlands SSA 5.) Northwest New Jersey SSA 6.) Coastal Plain SSA 7.) Ramapo SSA
The sole source aquifer program is a federal program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act. All questions about the program should be addressed to them. EPA's reference for the sole source aquifers in New Jersey is at:
<http://www.epa.gov/region2/water/aquifer/>
This data contains polygons of the sole-source aquifers for New Jersey that are approved as of December 2008. The coverage was built by the N.J. Geological Survey from standard GIS files of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) hydrologic units, New Jersey state and municipal boundaries, and aquifers.
Please reference this coverage as follows: Hoffman, J.L, 1998, USEPA-designated sole-source-aquifers in New Jersey: N.J. Geological Survey Digital Geodata Series DGS 98-6, Trenton.
I. Description of Data to be Provided.
The data provided herein are distributed subject to the following conditions and restrictions.
SUBJECT DATA LAYERS
For all data contained herein, NJDEP makes no representations of any kind, including, but not limited to, the warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular use, nor are any such warranties to be implied with respect to the digital data layers furnished hereunder. NJDEP assumes no responsibility to maintain them in any manner or form.
II. Terms of Agreement
1. Digital data received from the NJDEP are to be used solely for internal purposes in the conduct of daily affairs.
2. The data are provided, as is, without warranty of any kind and the user is responsible for understanding the accuracy limitations of all digital data layers provided herein, as documented in the accompanying metadata. Any reproduction or manipulation of the above data must ensure that the coordinate reference system remains intact.
3. Digital data received from the NJDEP may not be reproduced or redistributed for use by anyone without first obtaining written permission from the NJDEP. This clause is not intended to restrict distribution of printed mapped information produced from the digital data.
4. Any maps, publications, reports, or other documents produced as a result of this project that utilize NJDEP digital data will credit the NJDEP's Geographic Information System (GIS) as the source of the data with the following credit/disclaimer:
"This (map/publication/report) was developed using New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Geographic Information System digital data, but this secondary product has not been verified by NJDEP and is not state-authorized."
5. Users shall require any independent contractor, hired to undertake work that will utilize digital data obtained from the NJDEP, to agree not to use, reproduce, or redistribute NJDEP GIS data for any purpose other than the specified contractual work. All copies of NJDEP GIS data utilized by an independent contractor will be required to be returned to the original user at the close of such contractual work.
Users hereby agree to abide by the use and reproduction conditions specified above and agree to hold any independent contractor to the same terms. By using data provided herein, the user acknowledges that terms and conditions have been read and that the user is bound by these criteria.
Jeffrey L. Hoffman New Jersey Geological Survey P.O. Box 427 Trenton, NJ 08625
1) SSA polygons were given preference based on whose recharge zone covers the area.
In areas where the recharge zones of two SSAs overlap, preference was assigned based on
2) hydrologic units over municipal areas, and
3) which official name more accurately defines the overlap area.
The five overlapping SSA project review areas are detailed below.
(1) The Coastal Plain SSA project review area includes only a part of its formally designated stream-flow source zone. The part of its source zone lying upstream of the Coastal Plain physiographic province that overlaps the Northwest New Jersey SSA recharge zone was assigned to the Northwest New Jersey SSA project review area.
(2) The Northwest New Jersey SSA recharge area formally includes the Millstone River and that part of the Millstone River watershed that does not lie on the Coastal Plain. These conditions are contradictory because the watershed encompasses the river. Therefore, only those parts of the Millstone River watershed and Millstone River lying outside of the Coastal Plain are included in the Northwest New Jersey SSA stream-flow source zone and project review area.
(3) The Buried Valley SSA recharge area is based solely on political boundaries. Its stream-flow source zone is the area contributing flow to these boundaries. This definition has resulted in overlap with other SSA areas that were subsequently defined. These overlaps include:
(3.A) The southwestern side of the Buried Valley SSA partially overlaps the recharge zone of the Northwest New Jersey SSA. This area lies within the South Branch Raritan River watershed and is preferentially assigned to the Northwest New Jersey SSA project review area because of hydrologic-unit preference over political boundaries.
(3.B) Part of the Buried Valley SSA recharge area and stream-flow source zone overlies the Rockaway River watershed. The overlap areas are assigned to the Rockaway River SSA project review area because the Rockaway SSA recharge zone includes the Rockaway River watershed.
(4)The Rockaway SSA definition results in two other overlap area:
(4.A) The Rockaway SSA includes the Black (Upper Lamington)River watershed in Roxbury. However, the Black River is a tributary to the South Branch Raritan and thus also part of the recharge zone of the Northwest New Jersey SSA. This overlap area is assigned to the Northwest New Jersey SSA project review area.
(4.B) The Rockaway SSA includes the Lake Arrowhead watershed in Denville. This overlies the defined recharge of the Buried Valley SSA. This overlap area is assigned to the Buried Valley SSA project review area.
(5) The Ridgewood SSA's recharge zone is defined based on municipal boundaries. The western part of this recharge zone lies within the watershed of the Ramapo River. However, this watershed is defined as the recharge zone of the Ramapo SSA. Thus this overlap area is assigned to the Ramapo SSA project review area.
Changes were made when inconsistencies with other maps were found based on preponderance of data. In area where the line was labeled as approximate attempts were made to correctly locate the boundary. The 1986 photoquads were used to move the boundary lines to photo-identifiable features as needed. Changes less than 5 acres were not made.
1) Coastal Plain - Arc segments composing the northwest continuous contact of the prma aquifer from the baqfr250 coverage were manually selected and appended to the sole-source data, and intersected with arcs for the State boundary and Coastal Plain SSA. Arc segments corresponding to boundaries of HUC11 polygons with label values of 02030105070, 02030105080, 02030105100, 02030105110, were then selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with arcs for the State boundary, the Coastal Plain SSA, and the previous set of HUC8 arcs. All remaining arcs within the resulting polygon were deleted.
3) Highlands - Arc segments corresponding to boundaries of HUC11 polygons with label values of 02030103050 and 02030103070 were selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with arcs for the State boundary and the Northwest New Jersey SSA. Extraneous arc segments were deleted.
4) Ramapo - Arc segments corresponding to the boundary of the HUC11 polygon with a label value of 02030103100 were selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with arcs for the State boundary and the Highlands SSA. Extraneous arc segments were deleted.
5) Ridgewood - Arc segments corresponding to the boundary for the HUC11 polygon with a label value of 02030103140 were selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with arcs for the State boundary and the Ramapo SSA. Arc segments corresponding to the boundaries of polygons from the stmun coverage with Mun labels for Wyckoff Twp., Ridgewood Village, and Glen Rock Boro were then selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with the HUC11 boundary. Arc segments corresponding to the boundary of the HUC14 polygon with a label value of 02030103140040 were then selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with arcs for the HUC11 polygon and Ridgewood Village. All remaining arcs within the resulting polygon were deleted.
6) Rockaway - Arc segments corresponding to boundaries of HUC11 polygons with label values of 02030103020, 02030103030, and 02030103040 were selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with arcs for the Northwest New Jersey and Highlands SSAs. Arc segments corresponding to the boundary for the polygon from the stmun coverage with Mun label for Montville Twp were then selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with the HUC11 boundary. All remaining arcs within the resulting polygon were deleted.
7) Buried Valley - Arc segments corresponding to the boundaries of HUC11 polygons with label values of 02030103010 and 02030103040 were selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with arcs for the Northwest New Jersey and Rockaway SSAs. Arc segments corresponding to the boundaries of polygons from the stmun coverage with Mun labels for Bernards Twp, Warren Twp, Berkeley Heights Twp, Summit City, Millburn Twp, Fairfield Boro, and North Caldwell Boro were then selected, appended to ssa, and intersected with the HUC11 boundaries. All remaining arcs within the resulting polygon were deleted.
The sole-source data was cleaned and built using default program values for dangle length (10,000.000 ft) and fuzzy tolerance (0.183 ft). A new polygon item (ssaname) was added to the coverage polygon attribute table for specifying the name of each SSA. SSA names were manually added.
*Physiographic province boundaries needed for sole-source aquifer area delineation were extracted from correlative aquifer boundaries.
The coverage was exported to a shapefile.