Douglas Water Department, MA
Lead detected, under the action levels
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 2.4 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. Lead was measured in sampled homes but the 90th percentile is under both action levels. EPA's health goal for lead is zero, so test your own tap if your home was built before 1986 or anyone in it is pregnant or a young child.
About Douglas Water Department
Douglas Water Department serves about 4,400 people through 1,251 service connections, which makes it a medium-sized system under EPA's size classes. It is owned by a local government (city, town, county or district) and draws groundwater, in Worcester County, Massachusetts. EPA system ID: MA2077000; phone on file: 5084762400. Ask them for your address in their service line inventory - every system had to publish one by Oct 2024.
Every lead result on file
Against the period ending 2025 (2 ppb) the latest result is about the same. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Douglas Water Department is 3 ppb across 4 monitoring periods, none of them over 15 ppb.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 2.4 ppb |
| 2025 | 2 ppb |
| 2024 | 2.4 ppb |
| 2018 | 3 ppb |
Where this result ranks
Of the 535 Massachusetts systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 1.7 ppb; 13 are over 15 ppb right now and 66 have gone over at some point. Douglas Water Department's 2.4 ppb sits at the 61st percentile in Massachusetts and the 77th nationally (higher means more lead).
Nearby utilities
107 other systems share Worcester County; 36 of them have a higher latest lead result than Douglas Water Department. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Worcester Dpwp, Water Supply Division | 206,518 | 2 ppb |
| Fitchburg Dpw Division Of Water Supply | 41,946 | 5 ppb |
| Leominster Water Division | 41,683 | 2.8 ppb |
| Shrewsbury Water Department | 38,325 | 0 (not detected) |
| Milford Water Department | 30,379 | 1 ppb |
| Westborough Water Department | 21,567 | 1.8 ppb |
| Gardner Water Department | 21,381 | 8 ppb |
| Southbridge Water Department | 19,562 | 3 ppb |
| Holden Water Division, Dpw | 18,016 | 3.1 ppb |
| Webster Water Department | 17,776 | 3.7 ppb |
What to do in your house
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Douglas, MA 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 Douglas Water Department 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. Systems that went over once often dip back under; here is what that means.