Understanding the Annual Consumer Confidence Report

Water Quality Reporting

In 1996, Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act, adding a provision requiring that all community water systems deliver to their customers a brief water quality report annually.

Each year, community water systems are required to prepare a water quality report, or a Consumer Confidence Report (CCR), and deliver a copy to each of their customers. Water systems that serve over 100,000 people must post their CCR to a public website. If posting to a website, the supplier must provide a direct URL to customers to access the CCR. These CCRs must also be certified with the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) by June 30th each year. The annual CCR must be delivered to consumers by July 1 of each year.

A groundwater or surface water source may encounter many contaminants as it travels to a water treatment plant. While treatment systems will remove the majority of these pollutants, some level of contaminants are to be expected – whether they are minerals or bacteria naturally present in the environment, or potentially harmful substances resulting from human activity. The purpose of a CCR is to inform customers about these contaminants in their drinking water, and provide information regarding levels of concern. The Report contains language pertaining to the system’s source of water, potential health effects of certain contaminants, and any regulatory violations that may have occurred over the year.

Throughout the year, community water systems collect and analyze samples within their water supply, and upload the results every month to the Drinking Water Electronic Lab Reporting (DWELR) system. The results are then processed through the Pennsylvania Drinking Water Information System (PADWIS) to ensure compliance with EPA and DEP regulations. Contaminants are assigned very stringent Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs), and must meet these, as an exceedance could pose a health risk to customers. If the MCL is exceeded, this results in a violation and the water system must take steps to resolve it. This may include issuing a Public Notification to consumers containing information on why the violation occurred and how to mitigate the effects of the exceedance, such as a Boil Water Advisory. Contaminants that are not yet regulated are reported to assist EPA with monitoring the occurrence of these contaminants, and to help determine whether future regulation is necessary.

Understanding the CCR

The CCR is a general overview of the water quality delivered by your community water system. The report lists the regulated contaminants detected in the treated water and the level at which they were found. The CCR intends to provide customers with information on what they are consuming, and whether or not they should be concerned about certain contaminants. Included in the CCR are website links and contact numbers for consumers should they have questions, or want to find additional information regarding health effects of the less common contaminants.

The CCR provides parameters such as Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) which is the highest level of a contaminant that is allowed in drinking water. To understand the possible health effects described for many regulated constituents, a person would have to drink 2 liters of water every day at the MCL level for a lifetime to have a one-in-a-million chance of having the described health effect. Generally, if there are no MCL violations for the detected contaminants, a customer could know that they are drinking safe, clean water.

We can help.

SSM assists many of our clients to prepare their annual Consumer Confidence Report. We collect the water system’s analytical data and analyze the data including calculating the average and maximum results of each detected contaminant.