Bigelow, MN
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 1 ppb (monitoring period 2025-2025). 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.
Who runs the water here
Bigelow serves about 235 people through 109 service connections, which makes it a very small system under EPA's size classes. It is owned by a local government (city, town, county or district) and draws groundwater, in Nobles County, Minnesota. EPA system ID: MN1530002; phone on file: 5076832441. Ask them for your address in their service line inventory - every system had to publish one by Oct 2024.
Lead results over time
That is down 2 ppb from 3 ppb in the period ending 2024. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Bigelow is 19 ppb across 4 monitoring periods, 1 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 ppb |
| 2024 | 3 ppb |
| 2023 | 2 ppb |
| 2023 | 19 ppb over 15 |
How Bigelow compares
Of the 966 Minnesota systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 0 ppb; 7 are over 15 ppb right now and 48 have gone over at some point. Bigelow's 1 ppb sits at the 56th percentile in Minnesota and the 52nd nationally (higher means more lead).
Nearby utilities
11 other systems share Nobles County; 8 of them have a higher latest lead result than Bigelow. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Worthington | 14,052 | 14 ppb |
| Adrian | 1,211 | 3 ppb |
| Brewster | 506 | 3 ppb |
| Ellsworth | 490 | 11 ppb |
| Round Lake | 376 | 2 ppb |
| Wilmont | 344 | 1 ppb |
| Rushmore | 342 | 0 (not detected) |
| Lismore | 237 | 2 ppb |
| Leota | 225 | 11 ppb |
| Reading | 75 | 1 ppb |
Your move
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Bigelow, MN 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 Bigelow whether it covers that cost before hiring anyone - many utilities now do.
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. Why an old exceedance still matters: over the limit before, under it now.