Rankings

Website: South Carolina Has The Country’s 3rd Cleanest Tap Water

Published

1 year ago

August 21, 2023

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)

Rank	State	Public water system violations (2022)	Population	Violations per one million residents
1.	Kentucky	100	4,512,310	22.16
2.	California	1,079	39,029,342	27.65
3.	South Carolina	160	5,282,634	30.29
4.	Minnesota	209	5,717,184	36.56
5.	Nebraska	78	1,967,923	39.64
6.	Alabama	202	5,074,296	39.81
7.	Massachusetts	288	6,981,974	41.25
8.	Tennessee	301	7,051,339	42.69
9.	Nevada	156	3,177,772	49.09
10.	Maryland	319	6,164,660	51.75
11.	Virginia	550	8,683,619	63.34
12.	Georgia	699	10,912,876	64.05
13.	Florida	1,587	22,244,823	71.34
14.	Delaware	84	1,018,396	82.48
15.	Mississippi	272	2,940,057	92.52
16.	Rhode Island	105	1,093,734	96.00
17.	Arizona	729	7,359,197	99.06
18.	Utah	345	3,380,800	102.05
19.	Texas	3,192	30,029,572	106.30
20.	Arkansas	330	3,045,637	108.35
21.	New York	2,141	19,677,151	108.81
22.	Illinois	1,386	12,582,032	110.16
23.	North Carolina	1,232	10,698,973	115.15
24.	New Jersey	1,153	9,261,699	124.49
25.	South Dakota	114	909,824	125.30
26.	Louisiana	589	4,590,241	128.32
27.	Iowa	419	3,200,517	130.92
28.	Ohio	1,622	11,756,058	137.97
29.	Missouri	864	6,177,957	139.85
30.	Colorado	828	5,839,926	141.78
31.	Kansas	447	2,937,150	152.19
32.	North Dakota	124	779,261	159.13
33.	Washington	1,255	7,785,786	161.19
34.	Oklahoma	798	4,019,800	198.52
35.	Wisconsin	1,257	5,892,539	213.32
36.	Indiana	1,520	6,833,037	222.45
37.	New Mexico	478	2,113,344	226.18
38.	Michigan	2,272	10,034,113	226.43
39.	Oregon	1,161	4,240,137	273.81
40.	Connecticut	1,066	3,626,205	293.97
41.	New Hampshire	417	1,395,231	298.88
42.	Pennsylvania	3,957	12,972,008	305.04
43.	West Virginia	677	1,775,156	381.37
44.	Wyoming	267	581,381	459.25
45.	Idaho	910	1,939,033	469.31
46.	Maine	876	1,385,340	632.34
47.	Vermont	424	647,064	655.27
48.	Montana	813	1,122,867	724.04

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