New Athens, IL
Lead reported as not detected
Latest 90th-percentile lead: reported as 0 (not detected) (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 90th-percentile result was reported as 0 (not detected at the lab's limit). That says the sampled homes were low, not that your home has no lead service line. Check your utility's service line inventory for your address.
New Athens at a glance
New Athens serves about 1,970 people through 918 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 surface water, in St. Clair County, Illinois. EPA system ID: IL1631050; phone on file: 618-475-2144. Ask them for your address in their service line inventory - every system had to publish one by Oct 2024.
New Athens's lead record
That is down 5.2 ppb from 5.2 ppb in the period ending 2025. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for New Athens is 5.2 ppb across 6 monitoring periods, none of them over 15 ppb.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2025 | 5.2 ppb |
| 2025 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2022 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2019 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2016 | 0 (not detected) |
How New Athens compares
Of the 1,744 Illinois systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 0 ppb; 22 are over 15 ppb right now and 152 have gone over at some point. New Athens's reported as 0 (not detected) sits at the 41st percentile in Illinois and the 30th nationally (higher means more lead). Systems reporting 0 tie at the bottom, so the rank mostly reflects size among them.
Other water systems in St. Clair County
23 other systems share St. Clair County; 8 of them have a higher latest lead result than New Athens. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Il American-East St Louis | 131,368 | 3 ppb |
| O Fallon | 46,603 | 0 (not detected) |
| Caseyville | 13,798 | 0 (not detected) |
| Cahokia Heights | 12,528 | 0 (not detected) |
| Mascoutah | 8,759 | 4.9 ppb |
| American Water Oper And Maintenance, Llc | 6,779 | 0 (not detected) |
| Lebanon | 4,714 | 2.1 ppb |
| Freeburg | 4,707 | 1 ppb |
| Dupo | 4,684 | 0 (not detected) |
| Smithton | 4,381 | 0 (not detected) |
Next steps for New Athens, IL
Look up your address in New Athens's service line inventory. If it says lead, galvanized or unknown, test your tap. If your own line is lead, replacing the private side runs about $1,200-$12,300 (EPA average about $4,700). Ask New Athens 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. Small systems behave differently: why small systems go over more often.