Working with SimpleLab and the Internet of Water Coalition, we engaged over 120 academic, nonprofit, industry, and government partners to prototype the first national dataset of drinking water service area boundaries. That project catalyzed a broader effort by the EPA, and, in July 2024, culminated in the nation’s first comprehensive map of water system service area boundaries and the first drinking water justice metric in EJScreen.
We no longer have to wonder who is responsible for our drinking water and whether it’s safe to drink—thanks to EPA, we now know.
Knowing community water system service area boundaries—the nearly 50,000 drinking water “zip codes” across the country—is key to improving environmental justice, emergency response and resilience planning, and more. With the launch of EPA’s milestone dataset, we can finally answer the question: Who gets water from whom, and is my water safe to drink? We encourage anyone new to water boundaries data—as well as those who previously used our provisional map—to engage with EPA’s new data and the “drinking water non-compliance” metric within EJScreen.
Ninety percent of the US population relies on almost 50,000 community water systems for their drinking water. Understanding where the service area boundaries of those systems start and end is key for ensuring communities have access to safe, affordable drinking water. EPA’s new dataset is comprised of both state-supplied and modeled service area boundaries. Approximately 40% of those data were sourced from states and municipalities, with the remaining systems—the 60% with no state-supplied boundaries—modeled using machine learning. Since geographic areas can be served by multiple types of water systems not included in EPA’s dataset (e.g., private wells or non-community water systems), this map should be used as a first step in learning more about the water systems most of interest to you. Learn more about EPA’s dataset here.
Get Involved.
Federal, state, and local partners all have a part to play in improving the accuracy and utility of this milestone dataset—and we invite you to explore what your role in that process might be.
Make Technical Contributions.
Updates to EPA’s data and mapping tool will benefit from robust user feedback from technical partners and advocates interested in the creation, use, and refinement of this data. Do you have feedback or questions for the EPA?
Help improve the data.
Whether you’re a public or private utility, state regulator, or community advocate, there’s a role for you in increasing this data’s coverage and quality. If your state doesn't currently have service area boundary data, check out our playbook to learn how to create that data and replace approximations.
We work with state and federal agencies and a coalition of NGO partners to develop policy solutions for better drinking water data integration, use cases, and upkeep. Do you have ideas to contribute?
Develop policy solutions.
Read more about the evolution of this work.
Check out our case studies.
Questions or feedback about this work? We want to hear from you.