Fairfax Beats Md. in Clean Water Report

Maryland's WSSC is 82nd on the list

Thirsty? You might want to head over to Fairfax.

That's where the cleaner water is, according to a report released Saturday by the Environmental Working Group. Fairfax came in eighth on the ranking of the nation's top 100 water systems, while the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, which serves Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, finished 82nd on the list.

Fairfax scored high because of its success in eliminating trace-level chemicals from fertilizer and pesticides and chemical leftovers from the water-treatment process, according to the report, which covered 20 million tests of tap water across the U.S. since 2004 and found over 300 pollutants in the nation's drinking water.

Most water systems meet the Environmental Protection Agency's standards and many utilities say there's no reason for customers to worry

"We've never had any drinking-water violations," WSSC spokesman Jim Neustadt told the Washington Post. "Our water is perfectly safe to drink."

But the environmental group claims that some EPA standards are lax and that even tiny amounts of pollution can be harmful over years of consumption and samples from all three of the Washington area's big water utilities had at times exceeded pollutant levels posing a cancer risk of 1 in 1,000,000, if the water was consumed over a lifetime, according to the Post.

The Washington Aqueduct, which serves DC and Arlington, wasn't ranked because the EWG said "DC failed to provide affordable, high quality data."

Contact Us