Question 1

Is Dartmouth’s water safe to drink?

Accepted Answer

Every published reading is inside the limit it is measured against. EPA’s drinking-water file lists 18 violations for this system, the most recent beginning in 2026, 6 of them with no return-to-compliance date recorded. One reading sits close enough to a level to be worth knowing about — Aluminum. The record covers 35 substances actually found in the water.Dartmouth buys its water in, already treated, from a neighbouring system. The treatment decisions, and most of the readings on this page, were made by whoever sells the water rather than by the town.Whether that is good enough for your household is a judgement rather than a fact. It is an easier judgement to make from a reading at your own tap than from a town-wide average.

Question 2

Why is my water brown — and is it safe?

Accepted Answer

Almost always iron. Dartmouth has no iron figure on the public record, which means it was not reported rather than that it is not there — a report only has to list what was found.Iron settles on the floor of older mains and lifts again when the flow changes — a hydrant flush, a main break, a hot week when demand spikes. That is the brown water after a flush, the orange ring in the toilet and the laundry that comes out grey.Is it safe? Iron has no health limit at all, only a staining one, and officials are right that this part is cosmetic. Manganese is the part that is not. It stains at 50 ppb and has a health advisory at 300. Dartmouth’s figure is 23.9 ppb.In the moment: run the cold tap for a few minutes until it clears, and hold the laundry until it does.

Question 3

Why does my water taste or smell like that?

Accepted Answer

Chlorine, or a swimming-pool smell. Added on purpose, and required. Strongest nearest the point it goes in, weakest at the far ends of town. A jug in the fridge overnight gets rid of most of it.Metallic, or a bitter edge. Iron and manganese — manganese reads 23.9 ppb.Earthy or musty, mostly in summer. Chlorine by-products forming as water sits in the mains. Dartmouth reads 34.9 ppb against a limit of 80, and these climb at dead ends and in hot weather.Rotten eggs. Usually the water heater rather than the water. Run the cold tap: if the smell is only on hot, it is the tank.Taste and safety are different questions. Most of what you can taste is harmless, and some of what matters has no taste at all.

Question 4

Should I worry about lead? My house is old, or I got a letter

Accepted Answer

Lead does not come from the supply. It comes from the service line and the plumbing inside your own house, which is why a town-wide letter can follow a handful of homes.Because there is no central point to measure it, the rules ask for samples from a set of volunteer homes every three years, and the figure published is the level nine in ten of them came in under. Dartmouth has no lead figure on the public record we hold.The date that matters is 1986, when lead solder was still legal in household plumbing; lead service lines are older still. Dartmouth Water Division can tell you what it has on record for your address.Run the cold tap before drinking if it has stood overnight. It matters most during pregnancy and for young children. And a free lead test at a hardware store is a sales call, not a lab result.

Question 5

What about PFAS?

Accepted Answer

Dartmouth has been sampled for it, and nothing is above the federal level of 4 parts per trillion that applies to PFOA and PFOS. PFOA reads 2.02 and PFOS 1.79 parts per trillion.That level was set in 2024 and becomes enforceable in 2031, so a reading above it is not a violation today. Massachusetts works differently: it limits six PFAS added together to 20 ppt.What removes PFAS at the tap is reverse osmosis, or carbon specifically certified for PFAS. A standard pitcher filter does not. Boiling makes it worse, because the water leaves and the PFAS stays.It has no taste, colour or smell, and it accumulates over years rather than doing harm in a single glass — which is the reason to deal with it calmly rather than urgently.

Question 6

Do I need a filter — and which one actually works?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes the honest answer is no. 18 of the readings on this page sit comfortably under every level that applies to them, and nothing here has to be filtered to be drinkable.The thing to know first is that no single filter handles everything. Hardness, iron, PFAS and chlorine by-products are four different problems with four different answers, and any product sold as doing all of them at once is doing at least one of them badly.A pitcher filter — taste and smell. Not PFAS, not lead, not bacteria. Useful, and widely mistaken for something it is not.Reverse osmosis under the kitchen sink, $650–$1,600 fitted — the one that answers PFAS and lead.Whole-house carbon, $3,000–$6,000 — chlorine taste at every tap. An iron filter earns its place here, for the staining.Nothing should be bought before a reading of your own water, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling from a brochure.

Question 7

How do I get my water tested — and can I trust a free test?

Accepted Answer

Treat a free test as what it usually is: a sales appointment. A testing facility with financial ties to a filtration company is not reading your water for your benefit, and that is fair to say about this entire industry, us included. A test that is only read by the person selling the fix is not evidence.What to do instead. A state-certified independent lab will run a panel for a few hundred dollars; mail-in services do the same. Start with the basics — metals, nitrate, hardness, pH, bacteria — and add PFAS second rather than first.Ours costs $250, or $650 with the PFAS panel. The report is yours whether or not you ever speak to us again, and it is yours to take to any installer, including not us. If you already have a test from anyone, send it over and we will read it for nothing.And the numbers on this page come from one public document: State and federal monitoring, via the EWG Tap Water Database. An annual report is a legal minimum — it only has to list what was found — which is why the rest are here.

Question 8

Am I on town water or a private well?

Accepted Answer

The quickest test: do you get a water bill from the town? If so, this page is about your water.About 3,373 Dartmouth homes — roughly one in 4 — sit outside every service area and draw their own groundwater. If that is you, none of the readings here are your water.Nobody samples a private well but its owner: no annual report arrives, no notice is sent, and there is no reading on record for your address unless you paid for one. The town’s figures are still the best available guide to what this groundwater carries, and therefore to what is worth looking for.The standard panel is bacteria and nitrate yearly, then arsenic, uranium and radon for the bedrock here, PFAS, iron and manganese for staining, and pH and hardness because they decide which treatment will actually work.

Dartmouth Town Water Report

How your town water system works

Three things every Dartmouth resident should know

Detailed water quality results, based on your locationYour side of town

What is actually in Dartmouth’s water

Measure, solve, then protect

Questions people ask