Water Quality Page
Water Quality Reports
…and more thoroughly tested than bottled water (see the
footnote below)
Pawtucket Water and its employees are committed to providing our customers with the safest and most reliable drinking water possible.
The Pawtucket Water Supply Board ensures the safety of the
drinking water provided to the customer through a program of
monitoring and testing. The PWSB Water Quality Laboratory and
the RI Department of Health (RIDOH) extensively monitor the
water both before and after the treatment process. The water
quality is monitored even after it goes through the distribution
mains and is delivered to the customer.
There are numerous federal and state regulations that govern
drinking water. These regulations provide structure on how, when
and why samples are to be taken. The regulations tell the water
supplier what to monitor, how often the tests should be run and
how much of something can be present in the water. At the
present time, there are over 70 regulated contaminants and over
30 unregulated contaminants that must be monitored by PWSB. The
PWSB, with help from RIDOH, tests for over 170 different
contaminants in your drinking water. These tests are performed
daily, monthly, quarterly, or yearly as required.
The water delivered to the customer is monitored DAILY for
turbidity, pH, color, odor, fluoride, and bacteriological
contamination. The Water Quality Laboratory collects over 20
samples every day with an average of 600 samples taken each
month. By sampling so often we are not only meeting federal and
state regulations, we are ensuring that the water we provide our
customers is SAFE to drink.
FOOTNOTE: BOTTLED WATER INFORMATION
While municipal water systems must test for harmful microbiological content in water daily, bottled water companies are required to test for these microbes only once a week.
Similarly, public water systems are required to test for chemical water contaminants four times as often as bottled water companies.
Also, about one fifth of the bottled water brands tested positive for the presence of synthetic chemicals, such as industrial chemicals and chemicals used in manufacturing plastic.