Central City Water Supply, IA
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 3 ppb (monitoring period 2021-2023). 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 Central City Water Supply
Central City Water Supply serves about 1,264 people through 586 service connections, which makes it a small system under EPA's size classes. It is owned by a local government (city, town, county or district) and draws groundwater, in Linn County, Iowa. EPA system ID: IA5720010; phone on file: 319-438-1713. They can tell you what your service line is made of and whether they pay to replace it.
Every lead result on file
That is down 3 ppb from 6 ppb in the period ending 2020. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Central City Water Supply is 34 ppb across 3 monitoring periods, 1 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 3 ppb |
| 2020 | 6 ppb |
| 2017 | 34 ppb over 15 |
Where this result ranks
Of the 1,066 Iowa systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 1.4 ppb; 4 are over 15 ppb right now and 36 have gone over at some point. Central City Water Supply's 3 ppb sits at the 76th percentile in Iowa and the 82nd nationally (higher means more lead).
Neighbouring systems
39 other systems share Linn County; 11 of them have a higher latest lead result than Central City Water Supply. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Cedar Rapids Water Department | 142,364 | 1.62 ppb |
| Marion Municipal Water Dept | 41,623 | 8.3 ppb |
| Hiawatha Water Dept | 7,183 | 0 (not detected) |
| Mount Vernon Water Supply | 4,527 | 1 ppb |
| Fairfax Water Supply | 2,828 | 2 ppb |
| Center Point Water Supply | 2,579 | 0 (not detected) |
| Ely Water Supply | 2,328 | 4 ppb |
| Lisbon Water Supply | 2,233 | 1.7 ppb |
| Palo Water Supply | 1,407 | 1.6 ppb |
| Springville Water Supply | 1,164 | 0 (not detected) |
What to do in your house
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Central City, IA 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 Central City Water Supply 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. More in what a past exceedance means today.