The State of Maryland and the EPA require water suppliers to perform contaminant testing on their drinking waters and to report the results on a regular basis.  These regulatory requirements are based upon the current federal Safe Drinking
Water Act (SDWA) and are designed to ensure the quality and safety of your drinking water. To keep our customers informed, this annual report is prepared after the end of each calendar year.  This report is then mailed to our water
customers and made available to the public no later than July 1st of each year.

Although there were detections of some
contaminants in City water, all of those found were at safe levels.  All sources of drinking water are subject to potential contamination by
substances that occur naturally or are manmade. As water travels over the surface of land or through the ground, some of these substances can be picked up and transported with the water. These can be microbes, organic or inorganic chemicals, or radioactive substances.  All drinking water, including bottled water, may reasonably be expected to contain at least small amounts of some contaminants.  The presence of
contaminants does not necessarily indicate that the water poses a health risk.  More information can be obtained from the Environmental
Protection Agency's Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 800-426-4791, or at the EPA website
www.epa.gov/safewater.

In addition to the test results shown in this report, testing has been conducted for over 120 other regulated and unregulated contaminants including volatile and synthetic organic chemicals like
industrial chemicals and pesticides, inorganic
contaminants like heavy metals, and radioactive compounds like radon.  None of these other contaminants were detected at levels above the EPA minimum method detection limits. 
Specific information on this additional testing can be obtained by calling the technical information number listed under the city contacts section.

Most of the information shown in the data tables is from samples collected during 2003.  Some
contaminants are not monitored for every year. Data not from 2003 will be noted as such. Data
associated with a particular source will be
identified by water plant name whenever possible.  Test data on Well #4 and New Design Plants has not been included in this report due to the limited amount of water produced from those sources and the short time frame within which it was used.  Please call the technical information contact with any questions related to these test results.