2014 Annual Compliance Report Available

by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources

The State of Iowa Public Drinking Water Program 2014 Annual Compliance Report is available.  The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments of 1996 require the Department to issue an annual report of the SDWA violations in the state.  This report fulfills the reporting requirement in Iowa for the 2014 calendar year and was provided to EPA on July 1st.

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The report contains a summary of the program, a description of the requirements that systems must meet, the year’s violation statistics, and the list of the systems with each health-based standard or major monitoring or reporting violation incurred during the year.  The photographs in the report were from Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund projects that were completed during the year.  The maps depict the public water supply system universe in Iowa and the locations of the systems that incurred the health-based standards and major monitoring and reporting violations.

2014 Report highlights:

• There were 1,887 regulated public water systems in Iowa that served water at least one day during the year, serving more than 2.89 million people.
  
• There were no reported waterborne illnesses or deaths from Iowa public water supply systems in 2014.
  
• There were 208 violations of health-based standards at 118 public water supply systems serving 419,333 people.  On a percentage basis, 93.7% of the systems were in compliance with all health-based standards and 85.5% of the population was served water that had no violations of health-based standards.
  
• There were 714 violations of major monitoring and reporting requirements at 285 public water supply systems serving 233,704 people.  The system compliance rate was 84.9% and 91.9% of the population of Iowa’s systems were served by systems with no major monitoring or reporting violations.
  
• For the health-based standards, 79% of the violations are attributed to five contaminants: coliform bacteria, nitrite nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, lead, and total trihalomethanes.
  
• There were 12 systems with a total of 13 acute E. coli bacteria maximum contaminant level violations.  
  
• There were 13 violations of the nitrate standard at 11 systems.  
  
• Three systems received a violation for failure to obtain a certified operator during the year.  
  
• Seventeen community systems failed to prepare and distribute their annual consumer confidence report in 2014, which translates to a 98.5% compliance rate.

The electronic report is available at the DNR’s website.  CLICK HERE to download.