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The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulates drinking water treatment and quality in the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) establishes water quality standards to protect public health, and the primacy agency for Connecticut, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, enforces this law. Drinking water, including bottled water, may reasonably be expected to contain at least small amounts of some contaminants. The presence of contaminants does not necessarily indicate that water poses a health risk. The RWA consistently provides high-quality drinking water to our consumers that meets or is better than state and federal regulations. Your safety is our number one priority.
More information about contaminants and potential health effects can be obtained by calling the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 1-800-426-4791 or by visiting epa.gov/safewater.
Drinking Water Sources
Your drinking water comes from 10 lakes and three aquifers. The lakes are filled by rivers. Aquifers are natural sand, gravel and bedrock areas below the surface of the ground that are saturated with water, typically from rainfall.
Over 80 percent of the tap water in our water district comes from four reservoir systems (North Branford, Saltonstall, West River and Whitney) located in Hamden, Woodbridge, East Haven, Bethany, Guilford, Madison, Killingworth, Branford and North Branford. The rest of it comes from wellfields that draw from the Quinnipiac and Mill River aquifers located in Cheshire and Hamden, as well as the Housatonic River aquifer in Derby and Seymour.
Our distribution system is interconnected. Water from two or more sources may be delivered to some neighborhoods. This blending of water not only permits us to meet your water demands, especially during a heat wave, but ensures that water is readily available to fight a fire or other emergency.
What We Do to Safeguard Your Drinking Water
Protect
Our source water protection program focuses on pollution prevention and watershed management. We protect over 27,000 acres of land in the region and manage it carefully. We monitor the quality of the water and all activity on the surrounding land, watching for potential contamination of the lakes and aquifers that are the sources of your tap water.
Treat
Aquifer water is naturally filtered underground. Lake water is filtered at our filtration plants. We use chlorine to kill microbes that might cause illness, and we add phosphate to minimize corrosion of pipes and fluoride to prevent dental cavities as required by Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) regulations.
Distribute
The treated or finished water is delivered to you through a 1,700-mile-long network of pipes, pumping stations and storage tanks. We carefully maintain this extensive network to ensure that high-quality water is available whenever you turn on your tap.
Monitor
Our water testing is stringent. Each year, we perform more than 110,000 tests on over 10,000 water samples taken from numerous locations throughout our water distribution system, within our water treatment plants and in the lakes and aquifers where the water is stored prior to treatment. These samples are brought back to our state- and nationally-certified laboratory for microbiological testing as well as organic and inorganic chemical testing. The laboratory uses analytical devices as simple as pH meters or as complex as gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers. The results of these tests are compared to more than 175 state and federal standards and are reported to the DPH on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis, ensuring that only the highest-quality drinking water is provided to you.
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulates drinking water treatment and quality in the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) establishes water quality standards to protect public health, and the primacy agency for Connecticut, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, enforces this law. Drinking water, including bottled water, may reasonably be expected to contain at least small amounts of some contaminants. The presence of contaminants does not necessarily indicate that water poses a health risk. The RWA consistently provides high-quality drinking water to our consumers that meets or is better than state and federal regulations. Your safety is our number one priority.
More information about contaminants and potential health effects can be obtained by calling the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 1-800-426-4791 or by visiting epa.gov/safewater.
Drinking Water Sources
Your drinking water comes from 10 lakes and three aquifers. The lakes are filled by rivers. Aquifers are natural sand, gravel and bedrock areas below the surface of the ground that are saturated with water, typically from rainfall.
Over 80 percent of the tap water in our water district comes from four reservoir systems (North Branford, Saltonstall, West River and Whitney) located in Hamden, Woodbridge, East Haven, Bethany, Guilford, Madison, Killingworth, Branford and North Branford. The rest of it comes from wellfields that draw from the Quinnipiac and Mill River aquifers located in Cheshire and Hamden, as well as the Housatonic River aquifer in Derby and Seymour.
Our distribution system is interconnected. Water from two or more sources may be delivered to some neighborhoods. This blending of water not only permits us to meet your water demands, especially during a heat wave, but ensures that water is readily available to fight a fire or other emergency.
What We Do to Safeguard Your Drinking Water
Protect
Our source water protection program focuses on pollution prevention and watershed management. We protect over 27,000 acres of land in the region and manage it carefully. We monitor the quality of the water and all activity on the surrounding land, watching for potential contamination of the lakes and aquifers that are the sources of your tap water.
Treat
Aquifer water is naturally filtered underground. Lake water is filtered at our filtration plants. We use chlorine to kill microbes that might cause illness, and we add phosphate to minimize corrosion of pipes and fluoride to prevent dental cavities as required by Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) regulations.
Distribute
The treated or finished water is delivered to you through a 1,700-mile-long network of pipes, pumping stations and storage tanks. We carefully maintain this extensive network to ensure that high-quality water is available whenever you turn on your tap.
Monitor
Our water testing is stringent. Each year, we perform more than 110,000 tests on over 10,000 water samples taken from numerous locations throughout our water distribution system, within our water treatment plants and in the lakes and aquifers where the water is stored prior to treatment. These samples are brought back to our state- and nationally-certified laboratory for microbiological testing as well as organic and inorganic chemical testing. The laboratory uses analytical devices as simple as pH meters or as complex as gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers. The results of these tests are compared to more than 175 state and federal standards and are reported to the DPH on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis, ensuring that only the highest-quality drinking water is provided to you.