waterbycounty

Methodology

Source-specific county aggregations, two separate SDWIS outputs, deterministic transforms, and a fail-closed publication gate tied to the canonical build receipt.

Prepared by ByCounty Editorial TeamPublished by WaterByCountyUpdated

Publication scope

WaterByCounty aggregates records to counties. A county aggregation is not a current determination for a particular utility, address, tap, household, or private well. SDWIS covers qualifying public water systems; it does not cover private wells.

Canonical source receipt

The current artifact was compiled at 2026-08-06T16:26:22.869Z. The values below are read from the canonical provenance JSON during the verified build.

EPA SDWIS
Window 2021-07-31 through 2026-07-31; extracted 2026-07-31T13:49:15.765Z.
EPA ATTAINS
2022 reporting cycle; extraction range 2026-08-06T14:03:47.795Z through 2026-08-06T14:34:32.789Z.
EPA Water Quality Portal
Compiled-record window 2021-08-06 through 2026-08-06; extraction range 2026-08-06T14:35:31.846Z through 2026-08-06T14:36:56.957Z.
USGS NWIS
Extraction range 2026-08-06T16:11:36.163Z through 2026-08-06T16:11:57.925Z. Only observations no more than 48 hours old at pipeline fetch time qualify as fresh/current.

SDWIS Compliance Index

The index is a relative, tie-aware 0–100 rank of each valid county record's recorded health-violation rate. Lower recorded rates score higher, and equal rates receive equal scores. It is a comparison within the valid national cohort, not a safety score or a determination of current water quality.

Five-Year SDWIS Compliance Band

The band uses absolute thresholds for recorded health-based violation records per 100,000 population served during the stated SDWIS window. It is separate from the relative index.

  • A: 0–1
  • B: greater than 1–5
  • C: greater than 5–15
  • D: greater than 15–30
  • F: greater than 30

Neither the WaterByCounty SDWIS Compliance Index nor the Five-Year SDWIS Compliance Band is an EPA grade. Both are WaterByCounty presentation models derived from the stated SDWIS fields.

Source separation and null semantics

ATTAINS, WQP, and NWIS are reported as separate observations and do not affect or change the SDWIS Compliance Index or Five-Year SDWIS Compliance Band.

An observed zero remains zero. A null means no usable value; it is not converted to zero and cannot create a score, band, rank, or conclusion. WQP volume describes monitoring activity, ATTAINS describes state-reported water-body assessments, and NWIS describes one selected stream gauge—not household tap-water conditions.

Publication gate and current counts

The receipt contains 3,144 total county records: 2,940 publishable and 204 suppressed. Publication requires complete SDWIS fields plus substantive ATTAINS or WQP data, no contradictory record, and a clean generated-copy audit.

Suppression reasons are exact: 77 missing complete SDWIS and 137 lacking substantive secondary data; contradictory-record and prohibited-generated-claim failures are both 0. The snapshot retains 2,183fresh NWIS observations, 0 stale observations as current, and 961 unavailable observations.

These reason counts are non-exclusive: 10 suppressed records carry both reasons (67 are missing-SDWIS-only and 127 are insufficient-secondary-only), so 77 + 137 reasons reconcile to 204 unique suppressed records.

The compiled-track audit found 3,067 records with complete SDWIS, 1,522 with substantive ATTAINS, and 2,972 with substantive WQP. These coverage counts describe source availability; they do not create an additional combined score.

Automation and validation

Deterministic fetch, normalization, ranking, banding, summary, and validation functions transform the cited records. Compiler verification, publication-cohort parity, source-fact equivalence, identity checks, and negative corpus gates run before publication. Current county observations are deterministic functions of the published source fields.

Limitations

County boundaries do not necessarily match utility service areas or watersheds. Historical compliance aggregates do not establish present conditions. Source coverage and reporting practices differ, monitoring volume is not a quality measure, and this publication is not medical, engineering, hydrogeologic, legal, or water-testing advice.

Funding and editorial independence

Google AdSense display advertising may fund WaterByCounty. Advertisers do not control source selection, methods, coverage, or conclusions.

Affiliate verification firewall

The current publication contains zero current verified public affiliate recommendations. A future product can appear only after exact product identity and ASIN, checked date, evidence URLs, and supported claim scope pass the verification firewall. Potential partners do not control editorial conclusions.

Corrections

A reported discrepancy is compared with the primary record. Confirmed errors are corrected in the source artifact or presentation code and republished through the verified build; material methodology changes are recorded in the applicable build receipt or changelog.

Editorial contact

The contact page identifies the publisher and primary-source routes. Readers can submit source discrepancies, methodology questions, and correction reports to editorial@waterbycounty.com. The mailbox was delivery-tested before publication.