Editorial Standards

Our Editorial Mission

WaterByCounty is a data-journalism site. Our job is to take the water-quality statistics that the federal government already publishes — drinking water compliance, watershed health, monitoring records, and streamflow — and present them in a form that someone planning a move, comparing places to live, or researching environmental trends can actually use. We are not an engineering or hydrogeology resource. We do not design water-treatment systems, certify water safety, or provide remediation advice.

Every page on this site is grounded in a primary-source dataset from a U.S. government agency. Where we compute composite scores or rank counties, we publish the underlying formula on our methodology page. Where we draw on AI assistance for prose, we say so on this page and on the page itself.

Who Writes and Edits This Site

WaterByCounty is published and edited by Logan Johnson, Founder & Data Editor. Logan designs the data pipeline, sets the methodology, reviews published prose for accuracy against the underlying data, and signs off on every methodology change. Logan is not a hydrogeologist, water-quality engineer, or licensed environmental consultant, and WaterByCounty does not present itself as an engineering resource. Logan's role is the data-editor role: ensure statistics on this site match the source datasets, ensure prose stays inside what the data supports, and decline to publish anything that strays into engineering claim territory.

Long-form features and reported pieces, when published, carry an explicit byline naming the writer and — where relevant — a named subject-matter reviewer (for example, a water-quality scientist or hydrologist). The byline appears at the top of the article.

Where Our Data Comes From

All county-level statistics on this site come from primary government sources. We do not republish data from third-party aggregators. Our active sources are:

• EPA SDWIS (Safe Drinking Water Information System) — the federal database that tracks every public water system serving 25+ people. We aggregate health-based and monitoring/reporting violations from the past 5 years to compute water quality grades (A–F) and scores (0–100) for each county.
• EPA ATTAINS — records state §303(d) assessments under the Clean Water Act, showing which water bodies fail state-defined quality standards and why. We report impaired percentages, top impairment causes, and reporting cycles at the county level.
• EPA Water Quality Portal (WQP) — the federal data warehouse for water-quality monitoring records, aggregating samples from EPA STORET, USGS NWIS, and tribal/state programs. We summarize active monitoring sites, measurement counts, and characteristic groups per county.
• USGS NWIS (National Water Information System) — the USGS streamgage network reporting near-real-time river and stream discharge. We select one representative gauge per county and compare its latest reading against its long-term mean.

Each source's URL, release date, and pull date are documented on the methodology page. Source datasets are in the public domain (federal works) or published under licenses permitting commercial redistribution with attribution.

How We Use AI

Per-county pages on this site include a short, AI-generated narrative summary that contextualizes the statistics for that county. The narrative is produced by Claude (Anthropic) from the same source data shown in the statistics tables on the page. Logan, as Data Editor, reviews the underlying prompt and spot-checks output before publication; the prompt is constrained to forbid causation claims, treatment recommendations, and any prose that goes beyond what the source statistics support.

We do not use AI to:

• Generate engineering advice, remediation recommendations, or water-treatment specifications.
• Invent statistics, sources, or quotes.
• Write methodology, editorial standards, or correction notices.
• Generate cause-and-effect claims about water quality that aren't grounded in the source data.

When the underlying data is updated, narratives are regenerated to stay consistent. AI-generated prose is always paired with the source statistics so readers can verify the numbers themselves.

Corrections Policy

If you spot a factual error — a wrong statistic, a misattributed source, a broken citation, an outdated gauge reading — email logan@waterbycounty.com with the page URL and the specific issue. We aim to acknowledge every report within five business days and to publish a correction or update the page within ten business days for substantive issues.

Substantive corrections (changes to a statistic, methodology, or claim) are noted in a "Corrections" entry on the page itself with the date of the correction and a short description of what changed. Typographical and formatting fixes are made silently.

How WaterByCounty Is Funded

WaterByCounty is independently owned and operated. It is part of the ByCounty Network of data sites. Funding comes from two transparent sources:

• Display advertising served by Google AdSense and similar networks. Ad placements are clearly labeled and do not influence editorial decisions or which counties we rank where.
• Affiliate links, currently limited to water-filtration and water-testing product referrals. Affiliate links are labeled "Sponsored" and never determine which counties or water systems we feature on data pages.

We do not accept paid content, sponsored statistics, or advertorials. No data source, advertiser, or affiliate has any influence over the methodology, rankings, or editorial choices on this site.

Update Cadence

Underlying data is refreshed annually, on the release schedule of each source (EPA SDWIS updates quarterly; ATTAINS reporting cycles vary by state; WQP is continuously updated; USGS NWIS is real-time). Narratives are regenerated when the underlying data for a county changes. The methodology page displays its own "Last reviewed" date and changelog. This editorial-standards page was last reviewed on May 14, 2026.