Bear State Water Works, CA
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 1.71 ppb (monitoring period 2023-2025). The federal action level is 15 ppb today and drops to 10 ppb in Nov 2027; EPA's health goal is 0. The latest result is under the action level, but this system has gone over 15 ppb before. Lead comes from pipes, not the source water, so a home with a lead service line can still be exposed. Test your own tap.
About Bear State Water Works
Bear State Water Works serves about 100 people through 49 service connections, which makes it a very small system under EPA's size classes. It is privately owned and draws groundwater, in El Dorado County, California. EPA system ID: CA0901217; phone on file: 530-401-1515. Call that number and ask whether your address has a lead, galvanized or unknown service line.
Bear State Water Works's lead record
That is down 4.29 ppb from 6 ppb in the period ending 2022. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Bear State Water Works is 1300 ppb across 6 monitoring periods, 1 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 1.71 ppb |
| 2022 | 6 ppb |
| 2019 | 10.8 ppb over 10 |
| 2019 | 4.95 ppb |
| 2018 | 1300 ppb over 15 |
| 2016 | 0 (not detected) |
How Bear State Water Works compares
Of the 2,884 California systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 0 ppb; 30 are over 15 ppb right now and 215 have gone over at some point. Bear State Water Works's 1.71 ppb sits at the 77th percentile in California and the 67th nationally (higher means more lead).
Nearby utilities
18 other systems share El Dorado County; 7 of them have a higher latest lead result than Bear State Water Works. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| El Dorado Id - Main | 128,408 | 0 (not detected) |
| South Tahoe Pud - Main | 30,089 | 0 (not detected) |
| Georgetown Divide Pud | 9,434 | 0 (not detected) |
| Placerville, City Of - Main | 9,224 | 0 (not detected) |
| Lukins Brothers Water Company | 3,277 | 3 ppb |
| Tahoe Keys Water Company | 1,420 | 2.5 ppb |
| Tahoe City Pud - Rubicon | 1,384 | 2.2 ppb |
| Grizzly Flats Community Servic | 1,093 | 2.5 ppb |
| Lakeside Park Association | 924 | 0 (not detected) |
| El Dorado Id - Outingdale | 478 | 0 (not detected) |
Next steps for Georgetown, CA
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Georgetown, CA may offer free or low-cost kits through the utility. If your own line is lead, replacing the private side runs about $1,200-$12,300 (EPA average about $4,700). Ask Bear State Water Works whether it covers that cost before hiring anyone - many utilities now do. Its latest copper 90th percentile is 1412.5 ppb (copper action level 1,300 ppb).
These figures describe homes the utility sampled, not your tap. Only your service line record or a test of your own water answers the question for your house. What a 90th-percentile result does and does not tell you: how to read a lead result. More in what a past exceedance means today.