Mesa Hills Mutual Water Company, CA
Above the new 10 ppb level coming in 2027
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 13 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. Under the current 15 ppb rule this is not an exceedance, but it is above the 10 ppb action level that takes over in Nov 2027. Test your own tap; filter if your result shows lead.
Who runs the water here
Mesa Hills Mutual Water Company serves about 34 people through 18 service connections, which makes it a very small system under EPA's size classes. It is privately owned and draws groundwater, in Santa Barbara County, California. EPA system ID: CA4200862; phone on file: 312-543-5286. 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 up 5.7 ppb from 7.3 ppb in the period ending 2023. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Mesa Hills Mutual Water Company is 13 ppb across 4 monitoring periods, none of them over 15 ppb (1 over 10 ppb).
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 13 ppb over 10 |
| 2023 | 7.3 ppb |
| 2020 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2017 | 0 (not detected) |
How Mesa Hills Mutual Water Company compares
Of the 2,884 California systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 0 ppb; 30 are over 15 ppb right now and 215 have gone over at some point. Mesa Hills Mutual Water Company's 13 ppb sits at the 98th percentile in California and the 98th nationally (higher means more lead).
Other water systems in Santa Barbara County
62 other systems share Santa Barbara County; 2 of them have a higher latest lead result than Mesa Hills Mutual Water Company. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| City Of Santa Maria Utilities Department | 112,208 | 0 (not detected) |
| City Of Santa Barbara Water Department | 93,334 | 2.5 ppb |
| Goleta Water District | 85,535 | 0 (not detected) |
| Lompoc-City Water Utility Div | 40,538 | 0 (not detected) |
| Golden State Water Company - Orcutt | 34,267 | 2.6 ppb |
| Carpinteria Valley Water District | 16,356 | 0 (not detected) |
| American Water O&M, Llc - Vsfb | 14,971 | 0 (not detected) |
| Montecito Water Dist | 12,010 | 0 (not detected) |
| Guadalupe Water Department | 8,897 | 0 (not detected) |
| Vandenberg Village Comm. Serv. Dist. | 7,308 | 0 (not detected) |
Your move
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Solvang, CA 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 Mesa Hills Mutual Water Company 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. This system is in the band the 2027 10 ppb rule changes.