Fayette

County's water supply meets or exceeds all the

federal standards for quality.

That's

not news to water system officials, who monitor

the quality of the water supply and regularly

report findings to state and federal agencies,

but now the information is packaged and presented

to water customers, a new federal requirement.

If

you haven't received your customer confidence

report yet, you should soon. The four-page report

is being sent out with water bills, and

hand-delivered to apartments where customers

aren't billed individually.

requirement of the federal Environmental

Protection Agency, the report details all the

sources of local drinking water and lists the

levels of contaminants in the water.

The

news is good, said Water System director Tony

Parrott. "We've complied with [all the

federal standards] and had no problems. But then,

we're not supposed to have problems," he

said.

All

drinking water may reasonably be expected to

contain small amounts of some substances like

copper, lead and nitrates, according to the

report. The EPA prescribes regulations that limit

the amounts of those substances in public water

systems.

In

Fayette, for example, the level of lead detected

in testing local water is 3.4 parts per billion,

whereas federal standards allow up to 15 ppb.

Coliform bacteria tested at 2 percent, less than

half of the 5 percent allowed.

The

report also details the sources of water as Lake

Kedron, Lake Peachtree, Lake Horton, Line Creek,

Starr's Mill pond and the Flint River, in

addition to purchases from the cities of Atlanta

and Fayetteville.

Methods

used to treat the water also are revealed.

Federal

agencies already have all that information, said

Parrott. "They just want to make sure we

tell our customers," he said.

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