Federal Water Records for Published Counties

The Water Picture Your Utility Report Doesn't Show You

Every year, public water utilities mail a Consumer Confidence Report listing the contaminants they tested for. What those reports don't show is the broader picture: the separate watershed assessments, monitoring volume, and selected-gauge streamflow records associated with the county. A fresh USGS pipeline snapshot compares one selected gauge with its full-record annual mean; it does not identify a utility's reservoir or establish a source-water pathway. WaterByCounty brings four federal datasets — EPA SDWIS drinking-water compliance, EPA ATTAINS watershed assessments, EPA Water Quality Portal monitoring records, and USGS NWIS streamflow — into a single county-level view that anyone can read in under two minutes.

This site also fills a specific gap left when USGS WaterWatch, the longtime public dashboard for stream conditions across the US, was decommissioned at the end of 2025. WaterWatch gave millions of people a quick national picture of whether rivers were running high, low, or near normal. We carry that legacy forward at county resolution, pairing fresh NWIS pipeline snapshots against each gauge's full-record annual mean. Each snapshot keeps its observation timestamp and year and is not described as a continuously updated feed.

WaterByCounty is built for homebuyers researching a move, parents wondering about school water quality, journalists covering infrastructure, and policy researchers comparing compliance across jurisdictions. The data comes entirely from public federal sources — no proprietary scoring, no paywalls. Every number links back to an EPA or USGS endpoint you can verify yourself.

Prepared by ByCounty Editorial Team. Published by WaterByCounty. Editorial standards.

EPA ATTAINS · Clean Water Act §303(d)

Watershed Health Spotlight

Counties on opposite ends of the watershed-impairment spectrum, ranked by the share of assessed water bodies that fail Clean Water Act §303(d) quality standards.

Minimum 8 assessed water bodies required for ranking inclusion to avoid distortion from small samples. Counties without ATTAINS assessments are not eligible.

How the Five-Year SDWIS Compliance Band Works

The band is derived only from the recorded health-violation rate per 100,000 people served. Watershed assessments, monitoring volume, and streamflow are reported separately.

Browse by State

Select a jurisdiction to view its published county water records.