A story this week in Newsweek caught my eye. It highlights another map of the U.S. with all the drinking water violations.
It’s not the data that’s surprising it’s the fact that Afina, a company that sells filtered showerheads, just released the study. Sure, they want to sell more filters, but this kind of data should be available to all of us. It’s public health info.
The study reveals that West Virginia has the worst drinking water violations in the country. West Virginia scored zero out of 100 for water cleanliness, with nearly 29 violation points and more than 5 contaminants exceeding legal limits per 100 residents served.
Oklahoma, Alaska, and Pennsylvania weren’t far behind. And here’s the kicker: this isn’t news. A peer-reviewed scientific study published in Risk Analysis in 2025 already told us that Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Washington were water quality disaster zones. That study found eight of the ten worst counties for “water injustice” were in Mississippi.
So why did it take a company selling products to protect us from contaminated water to sound the alarm again? Where the hell is our government?
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Another 30 million live in communities where water systems operate unsafely. That’s roughly one in ten Americans drinking water that violates federal safety standards.
The Afina study used EPA data to calculate violation points, where the most serious infractions involving deadly contaminants like coliform bacteria or nitrate get ten points, other violations get five, and reporting failures stack up year after year. West Virginia’s 28.80 violation points weren’t an anomaly.
The 2025 scientific study confirmed similar patterns, identifying hotspots where low-income communities and communities of color bear the brunt of water injustice.
These aren’t just statistics. These numbers show how U.S. children are drinking water laced with arsenic. Families are bathing in water contaminated with PFAS, the forever chemicals linked to cancer, thyroid disease, and developmental problems. Elderly residents on fixed incomes have to choose between buying bottled water and paying for medication.
The System Is Broken By Design
The Safe Drinking Water Act handed states the responsibility for monitoring and reporting water quality, but here’s what they didn’t give them: adequate funding, adequate staffing, or adequate oversight.
A 2011 Government Accountability Office report found that states had up to a 49 percent error rate in reporting violations. Nearly half. And that was more than a decade ago. The audit system the EPA used to catch these errors? Defunded in 2010.
Dr. Upmanu Lall, a professor of engineering at Columbia University, told reporters he’s been warning about this for years. He estimates that 40 to 50 percent of water quality violations aren’t even reported. Utility operators say they lack the money, the staff, and the technical capacity to implement proper controls. Meanwhile, federal investment in water infrastructure has been gutted for decades.
And it’s getting worse. The current administration sought to completely eliminate federal funding for State Revolving Funds in its 2026 budget proposal. These funds are the primary way states pay for water infrastructure improvements. Without them, the pipes will keep corroding, the treatment plants will keep failing, and the violations will keep piling up.
The 2025 scientific study didn’t mince words: it identified systematic “water injustice.” The communities hit hardest are overwhelmingly poor and overwhelmingly Black and Brown. Mississippi. Tribal lands. The U.S.-Mexico border.
These aren’t accidents of geography. These are the consequences of deliberate policy choices that prioritize profit over people and protect wealthy communities while abandoning vulnerable ones.
West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Arizona. What do these states have in common? They serve large populations in small, rural, underfunded water systems.
As Dr. Lall explained, when you divide violations by smaller population sizes, the numbers explode. These communities can’t afford the infrastructure upgrades they need. They can’t hire enough qualified operators. They can’t fight back against the industries poisoning their water.
So they get left behind. And they get sick.
The Profit Motive Problem
Now, I’m not knocking Afina for doing this research. They used publicly available EPA data and highlighted a crisis that our government should have been screaming about from the rooftops.
Let’s be crystal clear about what’s happening here: a company that profits from selling filtration systems is highlighting the information gap for federal agencies.
Ramon van Meer, Afina’s CEO, said it himself, “This explains why we’re seeing growing demand for home filtration solutions as people take water quality into their own hands.”
And he’s right. People are taking it into their own hands because they have no other choice. Because their government has failed them.
The solution to poisoned public water should not be forcing every American household to buy private filters. That’s not a solution. That’s surrender. That’s accepting that clean water is a luxury product instead of a human right.
Dr. Natalie Exum, a professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins, raised valid methodological concerns about the Afina study, noting that violations can stem from many factors and that normalizing by population size might inflate scores for smaller systems. Fair enough.
But you know what her concerns don’t change? The fact that millions of Americans are drinking contaminated water. The methodology might be imperfect, but the crisis is undeniable.
What Needs to Happen Now
First, the EPA needs to do its damn job. Not the job a showerhead company is doing. The EPA’s job. That means comprehensive, transparent, real-time reporting of every water quality violation in every community in America.
No more relying on states with 49 percent error rates. No more letting 40 to 50 percent of violations go unreported.
Second, Congress needs to stop gutting water infrastructure funding and start treating this like the national emergency it is.
The State Revolving Funds need to be expanded, not eliminated. Every small, rural, underfunded water system needs technical assistance, training, and the resources to upgrade aging infrastructure and meet modern safety standards.
Third, we need enforceable consequences.
