For journalists and researchers

About Source & Tap

You can use this description as is:

Source & Tap is an independent website that shows what New Jersey water utilities report about their tap water, town by town. It checks every published value against the utility's yearly water quality report and compares it with both New Jersey's and EPA's limits. It's run by Yıldırım Sertbaş, an independent analyst, and doesn't give medical advice.

What the data covers

16 public water systems serving 142 towns on this site published water quality reports for 2025. 13 of them reported PFOA and PFOS values; 9 reported a value above a federal limit and none above a New Jersey limit. Values were last verified in October 2026.

The figures for each system are in PFAS results by water system and water hardness by water system; service line counts by town are in lead service lines by town. Every town is listed in towns A to Z, and each water system page links to the utility's own report.

Using our data

You're welcome to quote and chart the figures on this site. Please credit Source & Tap and link to the page you used, or to our home page:

Source: Source & Tap (sourceandtap.com)

The full dataset is on Zenodo under CC BY 4.0, so you can reuse and adapt it with credit. For academic work, cite it as:

Sertbaş, Y. (2026). New Jersey Tap Water Sources and PFAS Results by Town (2025 reports) [Data set]. Source & Tap. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23045751

Each figure can be checked at the source: system pages link to the utility's report, and how we check the data describes the process.

Before you compare a value with a limit

• Utilities don't all report the same number. Depending on the report, a PFAS value can be the highest running annual average, the highest single result, the highest average, the amount detected or a highest compliance result the report doesn't define. Our tables say which one each report uses, so two numbers in the same column can measure different things.
• "In compliance" usually means New Jersey's limits. New Jersey's limits are 14 ppt for PFOA and 13 ppt for PFOS. EPA's national limits, set in 2024, are 4 ppt for each.
• A value above EPA's limit isn't a violation yet. Utilities must meet EPA's PFOA and PFOS limits by April 2029, and compliance is then judged on running annual averages. In May 2026, EPA proposed letting systems request until April 2031; that proposal isn't final. (Status as of November 2026.)
• Some values cover only part of a system's supply. Where a report gives PFAS results for one source only, the system's page and the PFAS results notes say so.
• A report and EPA's own testing can differ. Some system pages also show results from EPA's nationwide PFAS testing (UCMR 5). Those are separate samples, often from other points and dates, so they don't always match the report's figure.
• A system's report isn't a test of your tap. Reports describe water across a whole system. Lead in particular usually comes from pipes inside or leading to a home.

What we can comment on

We can explain where a figure comes from, how it was checked and which limits it's compared with. We don't comment on health effects. For those, the New Jersey Department of Health and EPA are the right sources; for a utility's treatment plans or operations, contact the utility.