Gloucester County Water Report

Gloucester County earns a B grade for drinking water quality, scoring 67.8 out of 100. Over the past five years, EPA SDWIS records 5 health-based violations — a pattern that public water utilities are required to disclose and correct.

Under the Clean Water Act §303(d), EPA ATTAINS tracks whether waterways meet quality standards for drinking, recreation, and aquatic life (reporting cycle: 2022). A large majority — 100.0% — of assessed waterways are impaired (4 of 4 water bodies) across Gloucester County's watersheds. The leading impairment causes are ddt in fish tissue and pcbs in fish tissue. Impairment does not mean tap water is unsafe — it measures ambient waterway conditions upstream of treatment, not finished drinking water.

USGS NWIS gauge data (as of 2026-05-14T14:30:00.000-04:00) puts Raccoon Creek at 16.7 cfs — well below its long-term average at 41% of mean — low-flow conditions worth noting for water-dependent ecosystems. Streamflow is a leading indicator of drought stress, sediment load, and dilution capacity: low flows concentrate pollutants and warm water temperatures, stressing aquatic life and, in surface-water-dependent systems, the source water quality for treatment plants.

EPA's Water Quality Portal (WQP) aggregates monitoring data from federal, state, and tribal agencies. Gloucester County has extensive coverage with 159 active monitoring sites with 33,350 recent measurements on record. Predominant monitoring categories include pfas,perfluorinated alkyl substance and physical. More monitoring sites generally indicate greater scientific attention to local water conditions — and provide the baseline data that regulators use to set future impairment listings.