US states with the most drinking water violations, 2023
All 50 states ranked by the number of Safe Drinking Water Act violations recorded against their public water systems in 2023, most violations first.
A public water system is any system that supplies water for people to drink through pipes or other constructed conveyances, and every state has many of them, often thousands. When a system breaks a rule under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the violation is recorded against that system and counted in its state.
The count covers all three kinds of violation: health-based ones, where a contaminant or disinfectant is above its limit; failures to monitor or report on drinking water quality; and other violations, such as not issuing consumer confidence reports. The table ranks states by their 2023 total, and the chart shows the ten highest.
Key figures
Safe Drinking Water Act violations by state, 2023
Rank 1 has the most violations. These are raw counts, not rates: a state with many small systems records more violations than a state with a few large ones. Texas, for example, has 7,293 public water systems.
| Rank | State | Violations | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pennsylvania | 24,525 | 2023 |
| 2 | Texas | 15,340 | 2023 |
| 3 | West Virginia | 7,473 | 2023 |
| 4 | New York | 6,743 | 2023 |
| 5 | Oklahoma | 5,188 | 2023 |
| 6 | Florida | 5,187 | 2023 |
| 7 | Oregon | 5,140 | 2023 |
| 8 | Alaska | 4,715 | 2023 |
| 9 | Michigan | 4,551 | 2023 |
| 10 | Illinois | 4,469 | 2023 |
| 11 | Idaho | 4,128 | 2023 |
| 12 | Colorado | 3,923 | 2023 |
| 13 | Ohio | 3,803 | 2023 |
| 14 | New Jersey | 3,773 | 2023 |
| 15 | Indiana | 3,570 | 2023 |
| 16 | Arizona | 3,465 | 2023 |
| 17 | Wisconsin | 3,280 | 2023 |
| 18 | North Carolina | 3,212 | 2023 |
| 19 | Louisiana | 3,204 | 2023 |
| 20 | Connecticut | 3,193 | 2023 |
| 21 | Washington | 2,925 | 2023 |
| 22 | New Mexico | 2,729 | 2023 |
| 23 | Maine | 2,493 | 2023 |
| 24 | Missouri | 2,085 | 2023 |
| 25 | Georgia | 1,953 | 2023 |
| 26 | Montana | 1,942 | 2023 |
| 27 | California | 1,690 | 2023 |
| 28 | New Hampshire | 1,509 | 2023 |
| 29 | Virginia | 1,442 | 2023 |
| 30 | Vermont | 1,354 | 2023 |
| 31 | Iowa | 1,206 | 2023 |
| 32 | Arkansas | 1,139 | 2023 |
| 33 | Wyoming | 1,078 | 2023 |
| 34 | Kansas | 965 | 2023 |
| 35 | Utah | 940 | 2023 |
| 36 | Tennessee | 913 | 2023 |
| 37 | Massachusetts | 884 | 2023 |
| 38 | Nevada | 724 | 2023 |
| 39 | Mississippi | 691 | 2023 |
| 40 | Alabama | 545 | 2023 |
| 41 | Maryland | 480 | 2023 |
| 42 | Rhode Island | 392 | 2023 |
| 43 | Minnesota | 369 | 2023 |
| 44 | South Dakota | 265 | 2023 |
| 45 | South Carolina | 252 | 2023 |
| 46 | North Dakota | 233 | 2023 |
| 47 | Nebraska | 190 | 2023 |
| 48 | Kentucky | 139 | 2023 |
| 49 | Delaware | 117 | 2023 |
| 50 | Hawaii | 2 | 2023 |
Health-based violations
- In fiscal year 2021, 6.2 percent of community water systems had one or more health-based violations, affecting 23.9 million people.
- Federal drinking water regulations cover more than 90 contaminants.
The ten states with the most violations, 2023
| Category | Violations |
|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | 24,525 |
| Texas | 15,340 |
| West Virginia | 7,473 |
| New York | 6,743 |
| Oklahoma | 5,188 |
| Florida | 5,187 |
| Oregon | 5,140 |
| Alaska | 4,715 |
| Michigan | 4,551 |
| Illinois | 4,469 |
What the numbers mean
Pennsylvania's 24,525 violations are the most of any state by a wide margin, ahead of Texas in second place with 15,340. That does not by itself mean that people in Pennsylvania drink the most unsafe water: the count includes monitoring and reporting failures and other administrative violations as well as contamination, and it grows with the number of systems.
To judge risk, look at health-based violations and at how many people the systems serve. In fiscal year 2021, 6.2 percent of community water systems had a health-based violation, and the people they served numbered 23.9 million. A high state total is a signal to look closer at that state's systems, not a verdict on its tap water.