Farber Pws, MO
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 3.8 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
Farber Pws serves about 450 people through 136 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 surface water, in Audrain County, Missouri. EPA system ID: MO2010268; phone on file: 573-249-3652. 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 1.41 ppb from 5.21 ppb in the period ending 2024. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Farber Pws is 16.1 ppb across 7 monitoring periods, 1 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 3.8 ppb |
| 2024 | 5.21 ppb |
| 2023 | 3.84 ppb |
| 2023 | 7.12 ppb |
| 2022 | 16.1 ppb over 15 |
| 2019 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2016 | 3.01 ppb |
Where this result ranks
Of the 1,674 Missouri systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 1.04 ppb; 2 are over 15 ppb right now and 74 have gone over at some point. Farber Pws's 3.8 ppb sits at the 87th percentile in Missouri and the 86th nationally (higher means more lead).
Other water systems in Audrain County
5 other systems share Audrain County; 0 of them have a higher latest lead result than Farber Pws. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Mo American Mexico | 13,000 | 1 ppb |
| Audrain County Consolidated Pwsd 2 | 4,062 | 1.76 ppb |
| Vandalia Pws | 3,140 | 0 (not detected) |
| Martinsburg Pws | 559 | 1.6 ppb |
| Laddonia Pws | 511 | 0 (not detected) |
Next steps for Farber, MO
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Farber, MO 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 Farber Pws 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.