Elkhart is located in northern Indiana. Serious contamination problems in the later 1980's resulted in a proactive Wellhead Protection effort by the city. They formed a planning team to look at existing information on sources of contamination. Elkhart looked at old directories, aerial photographs, and maps. They worked with the local zoning and planning people, the health department, and the fire department. In addition, they contacted the State and Federal governments to try to locate relevant data bases with information that Elkhart could use.

Faced with limited resources to do a source inventory, Elkhart's planning team came up with a creative solution. They organized and empowered teams of senior volunteers to do the source inventory. Organizations primarily consisting of retired people, including SCORE, RSVP, and AARP provided a pool of over 600 potential candidates. From this pool, 20 volunteers were selected and trained to do the inventory.

With area maps and photo identification signed by the mayor of Elkhart, the senior volunteers inspected 225 parcels of land for potential sources of contamination within and around the Wellhead Protection Area. The seniors proved to be an invaluable resource as they have a lot of historical knowledge and want to give something back to their communities. Turnover at the city govenmnet over the years results in a loss of institutional memory of past land use practices. The volunteer retirees help fill some of that void with their knowledge. For instance, they remembered that the video store was a gas station at one time and they never saw any tanks being removed.

The senior volunteers were also a valuable educational resource. They answered questions in the community and they spread the word about ground water and wellhead protection.

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