North Covington W/A-North, MS
Lead detected, under the action levels
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 1 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. 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.
North Covington W/A-North at a glance
North Covington W/A-North serves about 1,259 people through 477 service connections, which makes it a small system under EPA's size classes. It is under mixed public and private ownership and draws groundwater, in Covington County, Mississippi. EPA system ID: MS0160004; phone on file: 601-797-4347. Ask them for your address in their service line inventory - every system had to publish one by Oct 2024.
North Covington W/A-North's lead record
Against the period ending 2024 (0.5 ppb) the latest result is about the same. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for North Covington W/A-North is 11.2 ppb across 6 monitoring periods, none of them over 15 ppb (1 over 10 ppb).
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 ppb |
| 2024 | 0.5 ppb |
| 2023 | 0.6 ppb |
| 2022 | 0.5 ppb |
| 2017 | 6.5 ppb |
| 2016 | 11.2 ppb over 10 |
Where this result ranks
Of the 973 Mississippi systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 1 ppb; 9 are over 15 ppb right now and 44 have gone over at some point. North Covington W/A-North's 1 ppb sits at the 50th percentile in Mississippi and the 54th nationally (higher means more lead).
Nearby utilities
7 other systems share Covington County; 5 of them have a higher latest lead result than North Covington W/A-North. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Southwest Covington W/A | 3,601 | 2.5 ppb |
| City Of Collins | 2,921 | 0 (not detected) |
| North Covington W/A-South | 2,326 | 2.1 ppb |
| Willow Grove Water Assn | 2,284 | 2.8 ppb |
| Town Of Mount Olive | 1,032 | 2 ppb |
| Cold Springs Water Association | 589 | 1.4 ppb |
| Town Of Seminary | 317 | 1 ppb |
Your move
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Mount Olive, MS 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 North Covington W/A-North whether it covers that cost before hiring anyone - many utilities now do. Its latest copper 90th percentile is 1695.1 ppb (copper action level 1,300 ppb).
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. The action level is dropping - the 10 ppb rule from 2027.