Bernalillo County Water Report

Bernalillo County's drinking water received a D grade, scoring 43.4 out of 100. Over the past five years, EPA SDWIS records 167 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 notable 21.4% of assessed waterways carry an impairment designation (12 of 56 water bodies) across Bernalillo County's watersheds. The leading impairment causes are alpha particles and polychlorinated biphenyls (pcbs). 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 2026-05-14T13:00:00.000-06:00) puts RIO GRANDE at 25.3 cfs — well below its long-term average at 3% 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. Bernalillo County has extensive coverage with 54 active monitoring sites with 62,572 recent measurements on record. Predominant monitoring categories include organics, other 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.