Several studies have examined the prevalence of contaminants in U.S. public drinking water.
A recent study has revealed the states that have the highest number of drinking water violations and unlawful contaminant levels served across numerous facilities. The study, carried out by the filtered showerhead company Afina, found that West Virginia had both the highest number of violations and unlawful contaminant levels per 100 residents served in its drinking water facilities, meaning it had the lowest drinking water cleanliness ranking out of all the states.
Why It Matters The quality of U.S. drinking water has frequently come into the spotlight—with studies and research highlighting the vast number of contaminants in water served to Americans nationwide. Major studies have recently uncovered the serious impact of even low levels of arsenic in drinking water—a contaminant present at unlawful levels in various states—while others have highlighted the widespread contamination of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS chemicals, in drinking water systems. As the current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been looking to roll back certain drinking water standards, concern is building over the quality of American drinking water, although some critics have questioned the methodology of Afina's study. What To Know West Virginia was the state with the highest levels of violations and contaminants in its drinking water systems, according to the Afina study, which reviewed data from various EPA sources. The EPA uses a weighted point system to reflect the degree of noncompliance at each public drinking water system, and the more points a state has, the more violations, and likely, the more serious the violations have been. Ten points are allocated if a system has acutely unlawful levels of coliform or nitrate in the drinking water served to residents—a maximum contaminant level violation—while five points are allocated if there is an MCL violation of other contaminants, or if there are issues with reporting and monitoring violations. One point is allocated to a system for other monitoring, reporting or public notice violations, plus an additional point for each year these are unaddressed. West Virginia had 28.80 violation points, and 5.68 contaminant levels in violation, meaning its overall cleanliness score was 0 out of 100, per Afina's rankings. Afina does not mention how many violations each state had, or how high the contaminant levels were, nor is it clear how violations were resolved. “Violations resolved through enforcement may be less harmful than violations that linger,“ Phil Brown, the director of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University, told Newsweek. Oklahoma was another state with high levels of both violations and contaminants, at 13.83 and 5.16 respectively, as was Alaska and Pennsylvania . There could be many reasons for why these states were ranked poorly for clean water, but Upmanu Lall, a professor of engineering at Columbia University, told Newsweek that it was likely “financial and sparsity driven factors and the fact that they scored this per 100 people served.“ “Smaller, poorer, rural communities face the most challenges, so if you take their violations and divide by the smaller population size, then that amplifies this statistic,“ he said. At the other end of the rankings, Hawaii was ranked as having the cleanest public drinking water, with a score of 96.97 out of 100, and 0.42 violation points, and 0.01 contaminants. Minnesota, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina and Delaware also had cleaner drinking water, based on Afina's rankings. While Afina's data suggests that these states have cleaner public drinking water, Lall warned that that may not necessary be the case. “Some of these may be weak reporting to the U.S. EPA,“ he said. “Others may be due to efforts to address challenges by the state.“ Natalie Exum, a professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, told Newsweek she was “highly skeptical of non-peer reviewed research, sponsored by a company that makes money selling a product based on consumer concerns for the quality of the public water supply.“ There were many factors that go into whether a water system may be in violation, she added, and “this normalization by population size may be disproportionately inflating bad scores for states that have small-scale water systems that serve smaller populations.“ The Afina study used the number of violation points accrued over five years per facility reviewed in each state, and the number of contaminants in violation over the last three years. It then calculated both per 100 people served by the facility, and the two factors were given a weighting of 40 and 60 percent respectively when determining the state's overall cleanliness score out of 100. What People Are Saying Ramon van Meer, CEO of Afina, commented on the findings: “With some regions facing violation rates nearly 70 times higher than others, many Americans are unknowingly exposed to concerning levels of contaminants. This explains why we're seeing growing demand for home filtration solutions as people take water quality into their own hands.“ Natalie Exum, a professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, told Newsweek: “There are different challenges faced by public water systems that may be at play here for violations: quality of source water, size of the water system, aging infrastructure, cost recovery, state regulations for reporting violations to the state EPA, among many others.“ Upmanu Lall, a professor of engineering at Columbia University, told Newsweek: “I have been concerned for a few years about the increasing trend in water quality violations reported to the U.S. EPA. However, more disturbing was the observation from discussions with water utility folks and the U.S. EPA that a large number of the violations may not even be reported. Utilities that face financial, personnel, and technical challenges and typically serve smaller or peri-urban/rural communities fall into this category. He added: “System operators argue that implementing these kinds of controls requires significant improvements in treatment systems and given the low level of federal and other investments in water systems for the last several decades, the result would make drinking water unaffordable. This has led to very few changes in the regulated parameters and levels by the U.S. EPA over the last several decades.“ He also said: “So, this is a factor that is compounding the concern raised by the reported violations. Our systems are aging, and while overall the quality of water services continues to be excellent relative to other countries, the rate of decay of many existing systems, due to a lack of investment and personnel to man and upgrade them with modern technologies, is very concerning indeed. The corresponding increase in stressors, such as PFAS, microplastics, and other exotic chemicals, in addition to the traditional concerns, and increasing exposure due to increasing storms that mobilize chemicals from a range of sources, exacerbates the situation.“ Phil Brown, the director of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University, told Newsweek: “The Safe Drinking Water Act gives states the responsibilities for monitoring and reporting and there is wide variation in state capacity and funding. There is also a lot of error. About two decades ago, EPA asked the Government Accountability Office to study the problem of incorrect state reporting in 14 states that they audited in 2007 and 2009. The GAO’s 2011 report found that states had up to a 49 percent rate of either not reporting or inaccurately monitoring reporting violations, and up to a 26 percent rate of either not reporting or inaccurately health-based reporting violations. The GAO cited inadequate training, staffing, and guidance, and inadequate funding as the main factors leading to the reporting problems. Indeed, the audit system EPA used was de-funded in 2010.“ He added: “On average, violations increased during the Bush administration, declined during the Obama administration, increased during the first Trump administration, and declined during the Biden administration. Current deregulatory efforts are creating even more problems. In its 2026 budget, the administration sought to completely eliminate federal funding for State Revolving Funds, a major source of state funding for water infrastructure improvements.“
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