These Consumer Confidence Reports let utilities' customers know whether their drinking water met the Environmental Protection Agency's water quality standards during the previous calendar year.
Most systems publish theirs online now and give people a heads up with their water bill. If you don't want to access it over the internet, you can call your water utility and ask how to see a printed copy — they're required to make one available.
Oklahoma City published its 2024 report last week. It's available online and in all Metropolitan Library branches. It may come in handy even for people who aren't on OKC water, because officials have added a handy key for understanding the jargon-packed Consumer Confidence Report table.
"When you look at this data table, you might be like, 'I don't even know what this means,'" OKC regulatory compliance manager Leigh Ann Kitsmiller said. "But we also even have a little kind of legend."
Even if a utility's water has a clean bill of health, like OKC's does, the report still lists out detected amounts of all regulated chemicals.
"Just because the numbers are listed on here does not mean that it's, you know, busting any kind of limit or it's above regulation," Kitsmiller said. "It's just information so the customer knows what's in their water."
People who want more information about their public water supply can contact the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality or look on its compliance monitoring database for more technical, in-depth information. They can also reach out to their utility and see if more information is available.
For example, Kitsmiller said Oklahoma City runs many more tests on their water than are required by the EPA. The city shares monthly bonus reports with those additional results for residents who request them.
"It's not all the regulated stuff, but it's just the people who need specialized water in their home," Kitsmiller said. "People who wanted that were like people who brew their own beer, or they had fish tanks, or maybe if they were on kidney dialysis and they just wanted to kind of know."
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
