i'm glad i haven't drank the tap water here for about ten years now! seriously seattle and king county, do better than this!

High iron content in Monroe. Filter your drinking water and also for your livestock. Filters are cheap.

Please don't scare people into drinking bottled water.
1. That map? It's a population map. Of number of people that live in a county where there's been even a single violation.
2. Seattle has some of the best tap water in the country, and I'd guess the world.
3. How about looking into the data that SPU publishes every quarter? Lead levels (to take one currently scary example) last quarter were less than 0.5ug/L at all four sources, where action levels are 15.
4. They even go around and sample water in homes. The last time they did this the average reading was 0ug/L for all 50 homes they sampled (though in 2013 they did have 3ug/L in 10% of homes - with an action level starting at 15ug/L).

Do a little bit of research before you send out these clickbait articles. You don't have to do much more than open your mail - they send this stuff out to every Seattlite.

Sorry, missed link for "some of the best tap water in the countr…".

"Seattle Public Utilities was listed as a water system that violated the SWDA's surface water/groundwater section, a set of rules that aims to protect people from pathogens leaching into their drinking water from surrounding bodies of water."

Okay, so let's take this, what does this mean? Actual pathogens in Seattle water? (Philosoraptor: can cryptosporidium "leach"?) I'm gonna guess no or we'd hear about that, i.e. this is probably a violation of process, not outcome.

I think we're​ talking about the 1989 rule here. https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/surface-wa…

I don't see a reference to Seattle in the PDF; it says details are in the appendices but it doesn't have appendices. Sydney, where did you find the information about Seattle and King County?

Ah, separate PDF, if you search for "threats on tap appendices", Appendix 3 is this rule? But no, that doesn't seem to refer to Seattle either.

I see a NRDC report on Seattle water that does say it "exceeded 1 of 11 criteria established under the Safe Drinking Water Act for judging whether systems using surface water must filter their water." Buuut that's a 2003 report, so I certainly hope that's not what we're talking about.

Nah, I give up. Sydney, what are you referring to, please?

SPU Drinking Water Reports and Informat…

The last 8 WQ reports plus all kinds of other info about the Seattle Public Utilities water system. It would have been prudent to talk to the water people at Seattle before publishing this information.

Here is one thing to note - "According to DOH, all surface waters are given a susceptibility rating of “high,” regardless of whether contaminants have been detected or whether there are any sources of contaminants in the watershed. Information on the source water assessments is available from the DOH website."

Thank you for updating the article. I get what the NRDC (and you) were trying to do here, but it felt like scare tactics. We need a good overall picture of water quality in this country, and I just don't see *one violation in the entire county = black shape* helps the conversation.

whiteboyjeff dear, I hate to break it to you, but whatever you do you're gonna die. Just like everybody else.

Drink the tap water.

Thanks for the update to the article.