EPA EXPORT · 13 SEP 2026FEDERAL COMPLIANCE RECORDS · NOT A HOME WATER TEST
TAP WATERLEDGERPublic system compliance records

METHOD NOTE · VERSION 2026-Q3

How Tap Water Ledger is built

Transparent selection, faithful fields, explicit limits.

1. Source

We use EPA's public Safe Drinking Water Act system-search download, retrieved from ECHO and dated September 13, 2026. It combines public-water-system characteristics with selected compliance and enforcement fields.

2. Published universe

The site publishes active community water systems reporting at least 2,500 people served. This creates a consistent, useful national comparison set without implying that smaller or non-community systems do not matter.

3. No invented score

Current health-based, monitoring/reporting, public-notice, other, and serious-violator flags remain separate. A system can have more than one flag. “No current violation flagged” only describes fields in this snapshot.

4. Place pages

City and county reports are included when at least two covered systems serve the place or when their combined reported population served reaches 10,000. Systems listing multiple places appear on each applicable report. Population totals can therefore overlap.

5. Dates and revision

EPA and state primacy agencies can update records after the snapshot. Always open the linked Detailed Facility Report and consult the utility's latest Consumer Confidence Report before making a current-condition judgment.

6. What this cannot tell you

This is not a tap-water sample, medical advice, a private-well record, or a substitute for local notices. Household plumbing and service lines can change water quality after it leaves the system.

Read the field guide and source links