Santa Claus, GA
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 0.9 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.
About Santa Claus
Santa Claus serves about 238 people through 88 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 Toombs County, Georgia. EPA system ID: GA2790001; phone on file: 912-526-6949. Call that number and ask whether your address has a lead, galvanized or unknown service line.
Lead results over time
That is down 2.7 ppb from 3.6 ppb in the period ending 2024. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Santa Claus is 27.9 ppb across 8 monitoring periods, 2 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 0.9 ppb |
| 2024 | 3.6 ppb |
| 2023 | 0.6 ppb |
| 2023 | 27.9 ppb over 15 |
| 2022 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2022 | 0 (not detected) |
| 2021 | 27.9 ppb over 15 |
| 2018 | 0 (not detected) |
Against other Georgia systems
Of the 1,681 Georgia systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 0.68 ppb; 15 are over 15 ppb right now and 131 have gone over at some point. Santa Claus's 0.9 ppb sits at the 54th percentile in Georgia and the 49th nationally (higher means more lead).
Neighbouring systems
14 other systems share Toombs County; 4 of them have a higher latest lead result than Santa Claus. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Vidalia | 14,496 | 1.4 ppb |
| Lyons | 4,458 | 1.7 ppb |
| Morris Village | 249 | 0 (not detected) |
| Knollwood Mobile Home Park | 176 | 0 (not detected) |
| Petross Subdivision | 151 | 0.9 ppb |
| Mcnatt Falls Subdivision | 91 | 1 ppb |
| Hilldale Water System | 88 | 0 (not detected) |
| Shady Acres Mobile Home Park | 86 | 0 (not detected) |
| Petross | 78 | 0 (not detected) |
| The Pittman Plantation | 57 | 0 (not detected) |
Your move
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Lyons, GA 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 Santa Claus 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.