U.S. Public Water System Compliance and Violations Since 1993

SDWIS/FED is the U.S. EPA's national regulatory compliance database for drinking water, containing information on approximately 160,000 public water systems. The dataset tracks violations of drinking water regulations, aggregated by violation type and contaminant, with annual data available from 1993 onward.

Use Cases

• Analyze violation trends by violation type and contaminant across states and counties since 1993.
• Assess compliance rates for the 160,000 public water systems using aggregated GPRA data.
• Model the relationship between water system characteristics and reported violations using multidimensional pivot tables.

Strengths

• Covers approximately 160,000 public water systems across the United States.
• Provides a long-term temporal record with data available annually from 1993 onward.
• Data is aggregated across several dimensions, including geography, violation type, and contaminant.

Limitations

• Data is provided as pre-aggregated pivot tables, limiting access to raw, system-level records for granular analysis.
• The specific columns and file structure are not documented in the input, complicating direct programmatic use.
• Relies on regulatory reporting which may have inconsistencies or delays across different states and systems.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Collection Method

National regulatory compliance reporting for the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).

Time Range

1993 to present

Freshness

Updated as of March 2024.

Geography

United States