Lead Reports

Water quality reports that detail information on the results of water quality testing done in your town, include information about the company’s water systems along with source-protection measures, are made available annually to all of our customers here.

Connecticut Water has an extensive program of water quality protection that includes land ownership, watershed inspections, and source water quality monitoring. These programs are overseen by the State of Connecticut Department of Public Health. Further, Connecticut is the only state that prevents water bodies that have sewer treatment plant discharges, or receive other waste discharges, from being used as drinking water supply sources.

In addition to limiting our supplies to quality sources with source protection measures, we also have a comprehensive approach to control lead in our water systems. This approach includes sampling and chemical addition in our treatment and distribution systems for corrosion control to maintain water quality and protect our customers from the potential for lead to enter their drinking water. We have a program in place, as required under Federal law, to minimize the potential for lead to enter your drinking water.

Lead typically enters drinking water as a result of corrosion, or wearing away, of materials in household plumbing containing lead. These materials include lead-based solder that in the past had been used to join copper pipe, brass and chrome-plated brass faucets, and in some cases, the service line that connects your house to the water main, if the pipe is made of lead.

In 1986, Congress banned the use of lead solder containing greater that 0.2% lead, and restricted the lead content of faucets, pipes and other plumbing materials to 8.0%, however the internal plumbing in older homes may still contain lead piping. In homes where there is still lead in internal plumbing and fixtures, under certain pH conditions, lead may dissolve into the drinking water after it has sat in the internal plumbing for some time. As such, sampling under our lead and copper program intentionally focuses on homes with older plumbing and samples are taken with the first water drawn from the tap in the morning.

We monitor for lead from customer’s homes to confirm that the chemical treatment processes remain effective. In instances where the lead in a customer’s home is above the action level set by Federal Standards (15 part per billion), we notify the customer right away. If 10% or more of the samples collected from a public water system are above the Federal Standards we notify all customers within the service area.