Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

By accessing or using waterdepartmentguide.org/, you agree to these Terms of Service and to our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Disclaimer, DMCA / IP Notices Policy, Editorial Policy, Sources & Methodology, and Accessibility Statement. If you do not agree, do not use the site.

2. Permitted Use

• Read content for personal, informational, or educational purposes
• Print or save individual pages for personal reference
• Share links to specific pages by URL
• Quote brief excerpts under the fair-use doctrine codified at 17 U.S.C. § 107, with attribution to waterdepartmentguide.org/ and a link to the source page
• Use the department contact details to call your department, attend its office during opening hours, attend a public meeting, or visit its website
• Use the site as a starting point for understanding which water department serves a specific address (verify with the department itself before relying)
• Use the site as a starting point for submitting a state open-records request to a specific water department (the request itself goes to the department under state law)

3. Prohibited Use

• Use any content for FCRA-permissible-purpose decisions (credit, tenant screening, employment, insurance, utility-deposit, government licensing)
• Use any content as legal, financial, insurance, or other professional advice
• Use the site to misrepresent yourself as the EPA, any state primacy agency, any PUC, a CFPB-regulated entity, or any specific department
• Use the site to operate a tenant-screening service, a credit-reporting service, or any FCRA-regulated activity
• Use the site to operate or promote unregulated bill-payment, debt-collection, or utility-deposit-financing services
• Use the site to misrepresent CCR information, EPA action thresholds, or other water quality information
• Scrape, mass-download, or systematically extract content for commercial republication or to build a competing database
• Use the site to harass, threaten, dox, or otherwise harm any individual, including any department employee, director, or commissioner
• Republish content under a different brand without permission
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code from any site infrastructure
• Use the site to deliver malware, conduct attacks, or otherwise interfere with site operation
• Use the site in any manner that would violate FCRA, FDCPA, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, state UDAP statutes, state utility-deposit rules, or any other applicable US federal, state, or local law

4. FCRA-Prohibited Use — Critical

5. Accounts

The site does not require account creation for normal browsing. If we add account features in the future, additional terms will apply and any account would not be linked to your water department account in any way.

6. Intellectual Property

The original editorial content of waterdepartmentguide.org/ — directory entries, walkthroughs, framework summaries, and design — is protected by copyright under the US Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. Subject to the permitted-use clause above and the fair-use doctrine codified at 17 U.S.C. § 107, all rights reserved.

US federal government works are in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105 — including EPA publications, US Geological Survey water-resource publications, and federal-agency CCR guidance. We rely on the public-domain status where we summarize federal material. State and local works may carry copyright protection that varies by jurisdiction; we comply with the specific terms where applicable.

We use the names of regulators, industry associations, and departments nominatively — “EPA,” “Safe Drinking Water Act,” “Consumer Confidence Report,” “AWWA,” “NACWA,” “Tyler MUNIS,” “InvoiceCloud,” “Paymentus,” and individual department names — to identify the entity our entry covers. This is nominative fair use under US trademark law, permitted where the use is not likely to cause confusion as to source, sponsorship, or affiliation under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq.

7. User Submissions

If you send us a correction, comment, or suggestion, you grant us a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, and incorporate the submission into the site for editorial purposes. We will not publish your name or contact details without your permission.

8. Third-Party Content and Links

The site links extensively to the EPA, state primacy agencies, state PUCs, individual departments, parent municipalities, AWWA, NACWA, NRWA, ASDWA, state open-government offices, and other third-party sites. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, availability, accuracy, or privacy practices. A link is not an endorsement.

9. Disclaimers

The site is provided “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE.” To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness, non-infringement, and availability. We do not warrant that department URLs, telephone numbers, director names, governing-body composition, or any specific detail is current or accurate at any specific moment — department details change frequently, and the department’s own page or the parent jurisdiction’s organizational chart is the authoritative current reference.

10. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law: waterdepartmentguide.org/ and its operators, editors, contributors, employees, and agents are not liable for any indirect, consequential, special, incidental, exemplary, or punitive loss arising from your use of the site or your reliance on any content — specifically including but not limited to any FCRA or state consumer-reporting-law liability incurred from prohibited use, any failure or delay in paying a water bill, any service shut-off, any water-quality concern, any decision to attend or not contact a department, or any other loss connected to use of the site. Aggregate liability to any user is capped at one hundred US dollars ($100).

Some US states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so some of these limitations may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be lawfully excluded under the laws of the State of Delaware or any other applicable US state law.

11. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless waterdepartmentguide.org/ and its operators, editors, contributors, and agents from any claim, loss, liability, demand, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your breach of these Terms or your misuse of the site, including any FCRA-prohibited use, any state consumer-reporting-law violation, any misrepresentation as the EPA or another regulator, any commercial scraping in violation of these Terms, or any harassment of department employees, directors, or commissioners.

12. Binding Individual Arbitration; Class Waiver

Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the site shall be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules. The arbitration shall be conducted in the State of Delaware (or, at your election, by telephone or videoconference). You and we waive any right to a jury trial and any right to participate in a class action or class arbitration. The arbitrator’s award is final and binding. Either party may bring an individual action in small-claims court in your state of residence in lieu of arbitration. Nothing in this section limits either party’s right to seek injunctive or other equitable relief from a court of competent jurisdiction. This arbitration provision is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 1 et seq.

13. Term and Termination

These Terms are effective until terminated. We may terminate or suspend access to the site or any user, at any time, for any reason or no reason, without notice. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including IP, FCRA-prohibited use, disclaimers, liability cap, indemnity, arbitration, governing law, and miscellaneous — survive.

14. Governing Law

These Terms and any dispute arising from your use of the site are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Subject to the arbitration clause above, any judicial action shall be brought exclusively in the courts of New Castle County, Delaware (or, where federal subject-matter jurisdiction is required, in the US District Court for the District of Delaware), and both parties consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms. The “Last reviewed” date at the top reflects the current version. Material changes are flagged on the site for 30 days. Continued use after the effective date of changes constitutes acceptance.

16. Miscellaneous

• Severability. If any clause is found unenforceable, the rest of the Terms remain in effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce any clause is not a waiver of future enforcement.
• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the other policies incorporated by reference, constitute the entire agreement.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with any sale, merger, or reorganization of the publication.
• Headings. Section headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.

17. Contact

For any question about these Terms, email info@waterdepartmentguide.org with subject line “Terms question.”