How to read a water quality report
Updated August 2026 · Louisiana CCRs are published by the Louisiana Department of Health
Every public water system in the country has to publish a Consumer Confidence Report, or CCR, once a year, and it lists what was found in your drinking water during the previous calendar year. Almost nobody reads theirs, because the document is mostly tables full of abbreviations like MCLG, RAA, ppb, and 90th percentile, with nothing telling you which of those numbers changes anything at your kitchen sink. Here is how to find yours and what to look at once you have it.
Where to find your report
Your utility has to get the report to you by July 1 each year, covering the calendar year before it. Most systems mail a paper copy or send a link with your bill. Louisiana also posts them publicly: the Louisiana Department of Health hosts CCRs by water system, and you can search by system name or by PWS ID, which is the letters LA followed by seven digits.
The part that trips people up is that your town name and your water system are two different things. Covington city core sits on the City of Covington system. Drive a few minutes and River Oaks runs on a St. Tammany Parish system that files its own separate report with different numbers. Your water bill names the utility, so start there if you are unsure.
The rows that actually matter for daily life
Most of a CCR covers substances that came back not detected. Four rows do real work.
The disinfectant row tells you whether the utility uses chlorine or chloramine and how much of it is in the water. New Orleans east bank reported chloramine at a 3.3 ppm running annual average in the 2025 report, Covington's city system reported chloramine at 0.9 ppm, and the parish and small systems around Covington run chlorine anywhere from 0.7 to 2.3 ppm. Which chemical you have decides which filter media can remove it, and we broke that down in chlorine or chloramine, which does your town use.
Hardness shows up in some reports and is missing from others because it is not a federally regulated contaminant. Covington city core publishes 3.5 mg/L, about 0.2 grains and exceptionally soft. East Jefferson publishes 78 mg/L, about 4.6 grains. New Orleans Carrollton publishes 100.7 mg/L, about 5.9 grains. Those Southshore figures are hard enough to support a softener recommendation.
Lead results look different from everything else on the page because lead is sampled inside people's houses. The number published is the 90th percentile, meaning nine out of ten sampled homes came in at or below it. The federal action level is 15 ppb.
Violations get their own section, and a system that had one has to say what happened and what it did. Read the fine print on averaging too. Old Metairie's published report shows individual samples of chlorine byproducts as high as 122.4 ppb against an 80 ppb federal limit, while the annual average that decides compliance stayed underneath. No violation was recorded, and some homes still drank a high sample that week.
What the units mean in plain terms
ppm is parts per million, and it is the same thing as milligrams per liter, so a report can switch between the two without the number changing. For a sense of scale, the CDC's recommended free chlorine range for swimming pools is 1 to 3 ppm. A Northshore system running chlorine at 1.7 ppm is inside that same range, which explains why so many people say their tap smells like the YMCA.
ppb is parts per billion, a thousand times smaller than ppm. Lead and disinfection byproducts get measured in ppb because the amounts are tiny. That 80 ppb byproduct limit is 0.08 ppm.
gpg is grains per gallon, the unit used for hardness and the one softeners are sized by. One grain equals 17.1 mg/L. Water is generally called soft below 60 mg/L, which is about 3.5 grains, and we listed system-by-system figures in is Northshore water hard or soft.
You will also see RAA for running annual average, MCL for the enforceable legal limit, MCLG for the health goal with no legal force behind it, and ND for not detected.
What the report will not tell you
A CCR describes water as it leaves the treatment plant and moves through the distribution system. It says nothing about the water sitting in your house.
Taste is the clearest example. Disinfectant levels drop the farther you live from the plant, and water that sits in a line over a holiday weekend tastes different from water on a Tuesday. Your water heater adds its own character, especially if the anode rod is aging.
Your plumbing is the second gap. The lead row reflects a handful of sampled homes across an entire system, and your service line, your solder joints, and your fixtures are yours alone. A tap test at your sink is the only thing that speaks to your house.
Private wells fall outside the system entirely. No agency publishes a report for a well, nobody mails you results, and testing is the owner's responsibility. Plenty of rural Covington and Folsom addresses fall in this category, and those homes need lab work rather than a CCR. We covered what that looks like in well water on the Northshore.
Questions people ask
Is chloramine worse than chlorine? At the levels used in drinking water, health agencies treat both as safe, and the practical difference is that chloramine is far more stable. It holds its residual all the way to the end of the line, and it takes catalytic carbon with real contact time to remove, which is why a pitcher filter barely touches it. The media that handles it is listed on our what we install page.
My report says no violations, so why does my water still taste bad? A CCR is a compliance document, and compliance has nothing to do with flavor. Covington's 0.9 ppm chloramine is well within every limit, and people there still smell it in their coffee. Sulfur, iron, dissolved solids, and water age all affect taste without ever crossing a legal line.
Do wells get a report? They do not. Private wells serving a single household are not regulated by the EPA or the state, so nothing is sampled unless you pay a certified lab to do it.
Why does my neighbor's report look nothing like mine? You are probably on different systems. Around Covington alone, the city system runs chloramine at 0.9 ppm, Northridge Estates runs chlorine at 2.3 ppm, and Lake Ramsey runs chlorine at 0.7 ppm, all within a short drive of each other.
Read yours without the tables
We keep a plain-language version of these reports for neighborhoods across St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Orleans, and Jefferson, with the disinfectant, the hardness figure where one is published, and what those numbers mean for a house. Put in your address at our neighborhood reports and read the one that covers your street.