Lead service lines in U.S. drinking water
MyTapWater.us aggregates published Lead Service Line Inventories from utilities across the United States so you can find out, in plain English, whether your home is served by a lead pipe.
What is a lead service line?
A service line is the pipe that connects your home to the water main under the street. From the late 1800s through the 1980s, lead was a common material for that pipe. Roughly 9 million U.S. homes are still connected to one. Lead is a potent developmental neurotoxin with no safe level of exposure, and most lead in drinking water enters through these aging service lines.
What changed in 2024
EPA's Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI), finalized in October 2024, requires every community water system in the United States to:
- Publish a service line inventory by October 16, 2024 classifying every line as Lead, Non-lead, Galvanized-Requiring-Replacement (GRR), or Unknown.
- Notify customers of lead, GRR, or unknown lines and offer guidance.
- Identify and replace every lead and GRR line within 10 years (clock generally starts November 2027).
- Meet a new action level of 10 ppb (down from 15 ppb) starting November 2027.
How MyTapWater.us covers this
No federal agency publishes a unified national inventory dataset. Each utility submitted its data to its state primacy agency. State portals vary; many do not publish bulk per-utility downloads. Phase 1 of MyTapWater.us covers the largest North Carolina utilities, sourced directly from each utility's own published inventory page and re-verified by automation every month.
For an in-depth explainer of where lead in drinking water comes from and what to do if your home may have a lead line, see our lead in drinking water guide.
State coverage
Other states are in progress. Reach out at hello@mytapwater.us if you can help source data for a specific state.