Sterling Water Department, MA
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 4 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.
Who runs the water here
Sterling Water Department serves about 6,814 people through 2,487 service connections, which makes it a medium-sized 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: MA2282000; phone on file: 9784226767. 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 4 ppb from 8 ppb in the period ending 2025. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Sterling Water Department is 22 ppb across 15 monitoring periods, 2 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 4 ppb |
| 2025 | 8 ppb |
| 2023 | 15 ppb over 10 |
| 2023 | 12 ppb over 10 |
| 2022 | 11 ppb over 10 |
| 2021 | 19 ppb over 15 |
| 2021 | 9 ppb |
| 2020 | 5 ppb |
| 2020 | 6 ppb |
| 2019 | 22 ppb over 15 |
| 2019 | 9 ppb |
| 2019 | 15 ppb over 10 |
| 2018 | 9 ppb |
| 2017 | 10 ppb |
| 2016 | 8 ppb |
How Sterling Water Department compares
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. Sterling Water Department's 4 ppb sits at the 78th percentile in Massachusetts and the 88th nationally (higher means more lead).
Other water systems in Worcester County
107 other systems share Worcester County; 17 of them have a higher latest lead result than Sterling Water Department. 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 |
Your move
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Sterling, 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 Sterling Water Department 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. More in what a past exceedance means today.