Hardwick Center Water District, MA
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 3.05 ppb (monitoring period 2024-2026). 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
Hardwick Center Water District serves about 80 people through 18 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 Worcester County, Massachusetts. EPA system ID: MA1124000; phone on file: 4134778590. Ask them for your address in their service line inventory - every system had to publish one by Oct 2024.
Every lead result on file
That is down 13.35 ppb from 16.4 ppb in the period ending 2025. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Hardwick Center Water District is 16.4 ppb across 4 monitoring periods, 1 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 3.05 ppb |
| 2025 | 16.4 ppb over 15 |
| 2025 | 4.1 ppb |
| 2019 | 2.85 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. Hardwick Center Water District's 3.05 ppb sits at the 72nd percentile in Massachusetts and the 83rd nationally (higher means more lead).
Neighbouring systems
107 other systems share Worcester County; 23 of them have a higher latest lead result than Hardwick Center Water District. 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 |
Next steps for Gilbertville, MA
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Gilbertville, 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 Hardwick Center Water District 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.