Sources & Methodology

1. Overview — Why a Tiered Hierarchy

US water regulation is layered. The EPA enforces the Safe Drinking Water Act at the federal level, with primacy delegated to 49 states + the Navajo Nation. State Public Utility Commissions regulate rates for investor-owned water utilities. Local governing bodies (city councils, county boards, PUD commissions, cooperative member meetings) set rates for municipal and special-district departments and select or appoint directors. Industry associations (AWWA, NACWA, NRWA, ASDWA) publish standards. We work to a tiered hierarchy so that, when sources disagree, we know which source governs.

The distinguishing feature of waterdepartmentguide.org/'s source hierarchy is that Tier 2 is the parent jurisdiction’s organizational chart — because we focus on department governance and the answer to “who runs this department?” lives in the city, county, or special-district org chart, not in EPA SDWIS or the PUC docket.

• The department’s own website — including any “About,” “Leadership,” “Director’s Message,” “Public Records,” “Public Meetings,” or “Contact” pages
• The department’s leadership / staff directory — for the director’s name and title (often a Public Works Director, Utilities Director, General Manager, or Superintendent)
• The department’s public-meeting page — for the schedule, agenda archive, and minutes (where the department or its parent jurisdiction publishes them)
• The department’s current-year CCR page — published annually by July 1 under the CCR Rule (40 CFR Part 141 Subpart O)
• The department’s billing portal landing page — for current portal vendor (Tyler MUNIS, Cayenta, InvoiceCloud, Paymentus, Harris ERP, CIS Infinity)

• City or town organizational chart — for municipal water departments; shows reporting line (typically Public Works Director or Utilities Director, reporting to City Manager / Mayor / Council)
• County organizational chart — for county-operated water departments; reporting to County Administrator / County Board
• Municipal code (codified ordinances) — for the legal structure of the water department, rate ordinance, and customer-service rules
• PUD official website — for elected commissioners and their public-meeting notices
• Cooperative bylaws and annual reports — for rural water cooperatives
• State Secretary of State business filings — for regional authorities and corporate IOU structure
• State elections office — for PUD commissioner election results

• EPA SDWIS — epa.gov SDWIS — for PWS ID, service population, source type, primacy agency
• Safe Drinking Water Act, 42 U.S.C. § 300f et seq. — the foundational federal statute
• National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWR) at 40 CFR Part 141
• State primacy agencies — located in each state’s Department of Health, Department of Environmental Protection / Environmental Conservation / Environment, Department of Natural Resources, or equivalent. Wyoming and DC do not have SDWA primacy; EPA directly enforces.
• Consumer Confidence Report Rule — 40 CFR Part 141 Subpart O
• Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR), and Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI)
• PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation — EPA’s PFAS NPDWR (April 2024)

• State PUCs / PSCs — California’s CPUC, New York’s PSC, Pennsylvania’s PUC, Texas’s PUC, Florida’s PSC, Illinois’s ICC, Ohio’s PUCO, and others all regulate IOU water rates within their state
• National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) — naruc.org
• Tariff schedules — the current tariff approved by the PUC governs lawful charges for IOUs
• Rate case dockets — the formal record of rate-setting proceedings
• Customer service rules — PUC-adopted rules on deposits, shut-offs, payment plans, weather moratoria for IOUs

• American Water Works Association (AWWA) — awwa.org — AWWA Standards and M-series Manuals of Water Supply Practices; State of the Water Industry report
• National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) — nacwa.org — publicly owned wastewater utilities
• National Rural Water Association (NRWA) — nrwa.org — small and rural water utilities
• Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) — asdwa.org — the 50 state primacy agencies’ association
• Water Environment Federation (WEF) — wef.org
• National Association of Water Companies (NAWC) — nawc.org — investor-owned water utilities

• Tyler Technologies (Tyler MUNIS, Tyler ERP Pro, Tyler Incode) — the largest US utility-billing software vendor
• Cayenta (a Harris/N. Harris Computer subsidiary) — enterprise utility billing
• Harris ERP / CIS Infinity — municipal utility billing
• InvoiceCloud — payment processor frequently used for water utility billing
• Paymentus — payment processor frequently used for water utility billing
• MUNIS (legacy) — predecessor product line

8. Verification Workflow — Eight Steps Before Anything Goes Live

1. Identify the right authoritative sources. Department website, parent jurisdiction’s organizational chart, EPA SDWIS, state primacy agency, state PUC docket.
2. Verify URLs are live. A human editor clicks every link before publication, including department main page and CCR.
3. Cross-check the office address against USPS data and the department’s own contact page.
4. Verify the governing body attribution. Against the parent jurisdiction’s published organizational chart or municipal code; for PUDs, against the state-required posted meeting notices and elections office records.
5. Verify the director / general manager. Against the parent jurisdiction’s published org chart or the department’s “About” / “Leadership” page.
6. Verify the public-meeting schedule against the local government’s published meeting calendar.
7. Dial-test the customer service and emergency lines. Quarterly cycle. We confirm the line answers and routes correctly — without generating any false emergency call.
8. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end, including a fresh check on the “this is not the department” notice, the 911 / Poison Control framework, and the FCRA non-CRA disclosure.

9. Sunshine-Law Route — State Open-Records Frameworks

For governmental water departments (municipal, county, PUD, regional authority), state open-records / sunshine laws give the public a right to request records. Every state has its own framework. We describe the specific route for each state in the department entry, including:

• California: California Public Records Act (Gov. Code § 7920 et seq.) — request to the department’s records custodian; agency has 10 days to respond
• Texas: Texas Public Information Act (Gov. Code Ch. 552) — request to the department; 10-business-day response window
• Florida: Florida “Sunshine Law” (Ch. 119) — broad access right; no statutory response deadline but courts have read “reasonable time”
• New York: Freedom of Information Law (FOIL, Public Officers Law §§ 84-90) — 5-business-day acknowledgment
• Washington: Public Records Act (RCW 42.56) — 5-business-day response window
• Illinois: FOIA (5 ILCS 140) — 5-business-day response window
• Pennsylvania: Right-to-Know Law — 5-business-day response window
• Ohio: Public Records Act (R.C. 149.43) — “promptly”
• And parallel frameworks in every state and DC

The federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552) applies to federal records (EPA records) but not to state or local water-department records.

10. Sources We Avoid

• Unregulated bill-payment services with hidden fees or aggressive collection terms
• Predatory utility-deposit financing schemes
• Fake EPA-branded or fake state-primacy-agency-branded sites
• Tenant-screening services as sources for utility account information — those are FCRA-regulated CRAs
• Other utility-aggregator sites — we work to the original department, not to other aggregators
• Outdated SDWA, LCR, or CCR references — we work to the current federal rule
• Pre-2024 PFAS references — EPA’s PFAS NPDWR (April 2024) significantly changed the framework
• Pre-LCRR lead service line references — the LCRR mandated public inventory; pre-inventory information is incomplete

11. FCRA Non-CRA Reminder

waterdepartmentguide.org/ is not a Consumer Reporting Agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. Our editorial content describes administrative and governance details about departments — not account-level information about identifiable individual ratepayers. We do not handle consumer-report information. Do not send us your account number, payment history, or any FCRA-relevant information. If you accidentally include any such information in an email to us, we delete it on receipt.

12. Federal Public Domain & Government Edicts

US federal government works are in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. We rely on the public-domain status when summarizing or extracting EPA, USGS, EPA OIG, or other federal-agency publications. State statutes, regulations, and judicial opinions are “government edicts” not subject to copyright under the doctrine confirmed in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. ___ (2020).

13. AI and Automation Policy

We use software tools for spell-check, grammar review, and routine drafting assistance. However, no editorial fact, URL, telephone number, director name, governing-body attribution, regulator attribution, address, or public-meeting schedule on waterdepartmentguide.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the department's own published page or the parent jurisdiction's organizational chart. Every department entry passes through human editorial review, including the eight-step verification process.