Affiliate disclosure
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy a product through one of them, The Water Helper earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. Those commissions pay for the equipment that gets tested and for running the site.
The Water Helper is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Rachel Taub earns from qualifying purchases.
Affiliation does not buy a recommendation. Products are recommended on what the measurements say, affiliate or not; a product that disappoints is described as disappointing, and where the water does not justify buying anything, the page says so. No brand and no installer pays to appear here.
Not professional advice
This site publishes measurements and opinions about household water treatment. It is not medical, legal or engineering advice. If a contaminant in your water worries you — lead and nitrate in particular, which matter most for infants and during pregnancy — talk to your doctor and to your water utility, and get your own tap tested by a certified laboratory.
Plumbing work can be subject to local codes and permits. Nothing here overrides your local requirements or a manufacturer's installation instructions.
About the water data
Contaminant measurements come from TheWaterMap.com, transcribed from each utility's own annual Consumer Confidence Report and licensed under CC BY 4.0. Water system inventory data comes from the U.S. EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System.
Two limits worth stating plainly. First, a Consumer Confidence Report describes the water leaving the treatment plant and the distribution system — not the water at your tap. Lead and copper in particular are mostly picked up in your own service line and household plumbing, so the only figure that describes your house is one measured at your own faucet. Second, coverage is partial and uneven: many systems are not in the dataset at all, and the reports on file are not all from the same year. Each city page shows the year of the report it is built on.
Intellectual property
Except where noted, the content of this site — text, photographs, test results, page design — belongs to the publisher. Reproduction or reuse without prior permission is not allowed. Third-party data keeps its own licence, as stated above.
Publisher
The Water Helper is owned, published and operated by Rachel Taub. Articles are signed Rachel.
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Personal information
What is collected, why, and the rights you have over it — including the rights California residents have under the CCPA — are set out in the privacy policy.