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Los Angeles vs Richmond

Put any two U.S. counties side by side on drinking-water violations, PFAS detection, and system coverage, straight from EPA SDWIS and UCMR5 testing.

3,254
Counties available
63
States & territories
142,471
Water systems covered

According to the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) and UCMR5 testing program, every figure in this comparison is pulled directly from official public water-system records. See our methodology for how violations and PFAS detections are counted.

Choose Counties to Compare

Metric
Los Angeles
California
Richmond
New York
Water Systems
Water Systems
276
1
Population Served
10,109,089
8,271,000
Systems with Violations
257 (93.1%)
1 (100.0%)
Violations
Total Violations
3,972
47
Health-Based Violations
MCL exceedances & treatment failures
1,260 (31.7%)
19 (40.4%)
Avg Violations / System
14.4
47.0
PFAS Contamination
Systems Tested for PFAS
117
1
PFAS Detected
95(81.2% rate)
0(0.0% rate)
Better relative to comparison Worse relative to comparison Equal / neutral
Data source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) and UCMR5 PFAS monitoring program. Teal = better (fewer violations / more systems), amber = worse (more violations / fewer systems).

Every figure on PlainWater is rendered directly from EPA SDWIS drinking-water data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on EPA SDWIS data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.