Manchester-by-the-Sea is located on Cape Ann, 30 miles north of Boston. The town is a suburban community with a year-round population of about 5,400. Most of the town is zoned residential with a downtown commercial area located adjacent to the town's ocean harbor. Approximately 50 percent of the town's drinking water is obtained from the Lincoln Street Well, the only source of drinking water within the town boundaries. The community established a Water Resource Protection Committee to guide the delineation of the wellhead protection area, source identification, and management of the drinking water supply. Manchester-by-the-Sea's wellhead protection program represented an example of a small community rallying together to protect the land area of a highly developed wellhead protection area. In addition to regulatory controls, the town put in place a monitoring program to collect semi-annual water quality samples. The samples are collected by students in an advanced biology class at the high school, under the supervision of the town's Conservation Commission. The monitoring program supplements the town's aggressive and on-going public education efforts. One such effort was the town-wide distribution of a brochure describing the proposed protection strategy and requesting the support of residents.

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