How to know what’s in your drinking water

TYLER, Texas ( KETK ) – When you turn on your tap, what comes out? Is it pure H2O, fresh spring water or water from a plant? What’s in it?

The different stuff that you’ll find in water like minerals and chemical treatments can vary so much that there are dozens of different brands of water you can buy at any store.

While you may not know exactly what’s behind your favorite water brands like Liquid Death, Box Water or Dasani, Texans are lucky because we get to know exactly what’s in our tap water.

Thanks to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texans can visit the Texas Drinking Water Watch , which is a website that will show you water sample results for any public water system in the state.

The first page of the website has a search bar where you can type the name of your city or water system in the box next to “Water System Name” or you can leave that box empty and clicking “Search For Water System” will bring up all the water systems in the database.

Once you’ve clicked search you’ll find a page like the one pictured below where KETK searched for Tyler. Clicking on the desired “Water System No.” will take you to the page where you can finally see sample results.

At the top of this page you’ll see several yellow links to things like “Water System Facilities” and “Violations” but for our purposes the most relevant link is “Recent Non-TCR Sample Results.” This page has results that specifically aren’t relevant to the Total Coliform Rule (TCR) for bacteria like E. Coli, so any chemicals or elements in the water like fluoride are listed here.

Once you’ve clicked through that link you’ll see a table titled “Recent Primary/Secondary Sample Results” that has results for chemical elements detected and not detected “ND” in the water system. For example, the City of Tyler had 0.061 milligrams of Barium per liter of water tested on Aug. 24, 2023.

This “Recent Non-TCR Sample Results” page has other sample results further down for things like SOC’s ( Synthetic Organic Chemicals ) and RVOC’s ( Regulated Volatile Organic Chemicals ) but luckily the City of Tyler has no positive results for those listed.

Other yellow links at the top the page will show you other results for things like:

• “TCR Sample Results” lists the system’s tests for coliform bacteria like E. Coli.
• “PBCU Summaries” will show you the system’s test results for Lead and Copper.
• “Chlorine Summaries” shows tests for Chlorine.
• “Turbidity Summaries” shows tests for haziness or turbidity in the water.
• “TOC/Alkalinity Results” shows total organic carbon and alkalinity in the system.
• “LRAA (TTHM/HAA5)” shows the local running average for total trihalomethanes (TTHM) and Haloacetic acids (HAA5) which are byproducts of water disinfectant treatments .

The “Water System Detail” link will show you several other useful tidbits of information like contacts for water system officials, who the system sells and buys water from, the system’s water sources and even how many residential and commercial business connections the system has.

For example, Tyler’s public water system reportedly has 37,038 residential connections and 5,599 commercial connections.

Back on the search results page you can also click on the desired system’s “Fact Sheet” or “Summary Sheet” where you can see the treatments like chlorine and filtration that are used to clean the individual system’s water.

To learn more, visit the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality online .

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