What State Has The Scariest Tap Water?
Find Out How Customers Rank Their Water Throughout the U.S.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the worst tap water of them all?
It depends on who you ask and how you decide to rate it. Are you looking at chemicals found in the tap water or are you judging on taste and smell?
Earlier this year, J.D. Power ranked the states with the best and worst tap water based on its U.S. Water Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study.
The study measures satisfaction among residential customers of 92 water utilities or companies that deliver water to populations of at least 400,000.
Customers were asked to rate the quality of water in terms of taste, color, odor, hardness, and other factors on a scale of one to 10, with one being unacceptable and 10 being outstanding. The states were ranked based on responses from 32,833 residential water utility customers from June 2023 through March 2024.
The Worst Tap Water
Arizona
New Mexico
Alabama
Oklahoma
Indiana
Nevada
Maryland
Wisconsin
Texas
California
Arizona came in as the worst state with customers receiving a 62.6 percent favorability score.
The complaint about the water? It’s too hard. This feedback is no surprise as the United States water hardness map colors Arizona in red, indicating extremely hard water.
Two common minerals in the Arizona soil, calcium and magnesium, contribute to that water hardness. Although it doesn’t pose a health risk, it does create challenges. Hard water can leave soap deposits in sinks, and leave spots on dishes and glassware. It can also create scaly calcium deposits on faucets, showerheads, and evaporative coolers, as well as on the inside of pipes, hot water heaters, and automatic dishwashers. One way to reduce hardness is to install an ion exchange water softener.
More than 7 million people in Arizona get drinking water from a public water system (PWS) regulated by Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. The state’s tap water generally meets federal and state safety standards, but it still contains certain contaminants like arsenic, nitrate, and total trihalomethanes, as identified by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
The main sources of Arizona’s drinking water are the Colorado River, Salt and Verde River systems, and groundwater, and cities like Phoenix treat their water in a multi-stage process.
Oklahoma ranked number 4 on the list, and it’s worth noting that water bills have become downright scary in Duncan, Oklahoma. In fact, the city’s Mayor Robert Armstrong recently released a statement in order to address problems that have been caused by the utility bills.
Imagine paying sky-high prices for water that customers’ say is some of the worst in the nation.
Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) have been found above legal limits at 98 utilities in the state, according to EWG’s Tap Water Database. These disinfection byproducts are cancer-causing contaminants that form during water treatment with chlorine and other disinfectants.
Levels of TTHMs generally increase in the summer months due to the warmer temperatures, but they can also be affected by seasonal changes in source water quality or by changing amounts of disinfection added to the water.
The survey also found that combined water and sewer bill for a typical household in the U.S. has increased more than 54 percent since 2012. The data also showed that 41 percent of customers say they do not feel the water provided by their local utility is safe to drink.
Water utilities need to continue to find ways to connect with their customers and be transparent.
John Gonzalez, Communications manager at Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, shares tips from their social media journey.
“A lot of utilities would be better served by working on responding in the moment and recognizing that responsiveness really does make a huge difference,” he shared in a 2022 interview. “You don’t have to have a pun with every tweet, you don’t have to write poetry on your account if you’re not used to that, but if you want to show that your customers matter, responsiveness is a great place to start.”
The Best Tap Water
Washington
Kansas
Hawaii
Kentucky
Massachusetts
New York
Connecticut
Georgia
Louisiana
Virginia
Washington ranked as the state with the best tap water, with 84.5 percent of customers giving their water positive marks, according to J.D. Power.
The state established a program in 2021 to target per-and-polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS “forever chemicals,” found in its drinking water. The state also announced it is adopting a drinking water standard higher than the EPA’s regulation on PFAS.
Want to know more about your tap water? We recommend EWG’s tap water database or Tap Score’s City Water Project.
Sadly, tap water issues are nothing new. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 was the first law created to address water pollution in this country, but it was virtually rewritten in 1972 and is now commonly referred to as the CleanWater Act (CWA).
President Gerald Ford signed the act (first proposed by Richard Nixon) into law on December 16, 1974, amid media reports and television documentaries warning that the quality of U.S. drinking water was declining.
Here’s some of what was written in a 1975 EPA press release:
Potential cancer-causing chemicals have been found in trace quantities in New Orleans’ and Pittsburgh’s drinking water. In Boston, lead from water supply pipes has been found in water drawn from the tap. Viral or bacteriological contamination of drinking water has resulted in communication of disease, often in smaller, more rural communities where treatment works are outdated or modern techniques are not available.
In other cities and towns, foul odors and tastes make the water unpalatable. While the overall quality of this nation’s drinking water is well above that supplied in any other country, professional waterworks operators, government, and citizens all agree that a much better job must be done in guarding our supplies.
In fact, in Nixon’s 1970 State of the Union address he made remarks that today might characterize someone as a liberal environmentalist:
The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?
Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.
Clean air, clean water, open spaces-these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.
We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.
The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America's history.
Nixon made these remarks in response to years of widespread and visible pollution. He had bipartisan support for increasing measures to protect the environment, which is hard to imagine in today’s political climate.
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It is so sad that there is no state that has completely safe drinking water.
Even worse is that most public schools don’t even have safe drinking water.
Kentucky has suffered radioactive waste Maxi Flats (I studied for natural remediation practices) and Oil/Gas polluted water since The American Oil Well in Burkesville, KY, (my grandfather and uncle successfully drilled in Hadley Quad and I hit five wells in 1999) is considered by some to be the oldest commercial oil well in the United States, struck in 1829 while drilling for salt brine. It was a large, pressurized gusher that created a "river of fire" on the Cumberland River and was the first to have its oil bottled and sold for medicinal use under the name "American Oil". Although the 1818 Martin Beatty well in McCreary County was drilled for salt and produced oil commercially, it is sometimes confused with the 1829 Burkesville well due to their similar discoveries and the Burkesville well's later fame.