Great Green Wall Health, a health information website, released a report on states with the cleanest tap water and they ranked South Carolina as having the 3rd cleanest in the country.
To rank the states, the company analyzed public water system violations (PWS) from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The number of PWS violations was calculated as a proportion of one million residents, to give a fairer overview of which contiguous states offer the cleanest tap water. A violation is defined as a breach of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) requirements.
In first place was Kentucky, which saw 100 total PWS violations during 2022, the equivalent of 22.16 violations per one million residents.
California was in second place, with 1,079 PWS violations in 2022, which translates to 27.65 violations per one million residents given its larger population.
South Carolina was in third place with 160 total PWS violations in 2022, equal to 30.29 per one million residents. Despite being one of the states with fewer violations, State Attorney General Alan Wilson in August filed a lawsuit against several companies, including DuPont and 3M, related to PFAS (also known as “forever chemicals”) being in public water systems. There have also been years of water issues in the city of Denmark.
Montana was found to have the least clean tap water of all the contiguous states, with a total of 813 PWS violations in 2022, which when extrapolated is the equivalent of 724.04 violations per one million residents.
Contiguous states ranked from least to most public water system (PWS) violations (2022)
Data was taken from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that looked at the total number of public water system (PWS) violations each state recorded in 2022. The number of violations per 1 million residents was then calculated (PWS violations / Population x 1,000,000) to give a fairer overview of which states the cleanest tap water. Population figures were taken from 2022 US Census popu
