Is Your Drinking Water Safe?
If you have a private well, you probably have questions about what could contaminate your water and how you would know. The federal government has no authority to regulate the safety of private wells and neither do many state government agencies. The responsibility for safe drinking water from private wells usually falls on the homeowner.
Read our section on when you should test your well water to find out if it is time to test your water.
Drinking Water Tests
You can test for individual contaminants such as lead, or nitrate/nitrite, you can test for a variety of contaminants at once with water test packages.
The standard drinking water test package tests for alkalinity, arsenic, calcium, chloride, coliform bacteria, conductivity, corrosivity, fluoride, hardness, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, nitrate, nitrite, orthophosphate, pH, potassium, sodium, sulfate.
For more information visit our Standard Drinking Water Test Package page.
Title 5 Drinking Water Test Package
If you have both a private well and a septic system, you probably have to comply with Title 5 of the State Environmental Code, 310 CMR 15.000. NEL offers a Title 5 Drinking Water Test Package which tests for VOC, total coliform bacteria, ammonia, and nitrate.