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El Paso, TX

Is El Paso tap water safe to drink?

EL PASO WATER UTILITIES supplies 747,168 people here, drawing surface water. Here is its entire federal compliance record — and, just as importantly, what that record cannot tell you.

Kitchen tap running — El Paso municipal drinking water

People served

747,168

EL PASO WATER UTILITIES

Source

surface water

SW

Violations on record

54

all time

Health-based

0

none on record

What this page is, and what it is not

This is the federal compliance record — what EPA has cited this utility for. It is not a water quality test. A system with no violations has not been shown to be clean; it has nothing reported, which is a weaker claim than it looks. The actual measured contaminant levels are in the utility’s annual Consumer Confidence Report, which every US utility must publish and which is not in this dataset.

The full record

Every violation, most recent first

FromContaminantWhat happenedHealth-based
2024-03-01Chloritemissed monitoring or reportingno
2023-05-01Chloritemissed monitoring or reportingno
2023-02-01EPA contaminant code 8000missed required monitoringno
2020-01-01EPA contaminant code 5000missed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-011,2,4-Trichlorobenzenemissed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-01cis-1,2-Dichloroethylenemissed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-01Xylenes (total)missed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-01Dichloromethanemissed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-01o-Dichlorobenzenemissed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-01p-Dichlorobenzenemissed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-01Vinyl chloridemissed monitoring or reportingno
2018-04-011,1-Dichloroethylenemissed monitoring or reportingno

Showing the 12 most recent of 54. The complete record is public at EPA ECHO.

What it means for filter choice

Every citation on this system is a monitoring or reporting failure rather than a health-based one — paperwork, not contamination. That is worth knowing before spending anything: it is not evidence you need a filter. Test your own tap for $14 and decide on the number, not on the utility's admin record.

Test before you spend

Fourteen dollars beats a compliance record

A federal record describes a utility. It cannot describe the pipe between the main and your kitchen, which is where lead usually comes from. Your own tap is the only thing that answers your own question.

HoneForest TDS meter

HoneForest TDS meter

$13.97

4.5 16,400 reviews · 2,000+ bought last month

Tells you your dissolved-solids number in about four seconds, which is where every decision on this site should start.

Against it: TDS is not a safety measurement. It counts dissolved solids and cannot see lead, PFAS or bacteria. It tells you how hard your water is and whether a filter is still doing anything — nothing more. Anyone selling you a system on a TDS reading alone is misleading you.

Check price on Amazonchecked
2026-08-31
HM Digital TDS-3

HM Digital TDS-3

$13.60

4.6 1,800 reviews · 1,000+ bought last month

The one that has been in service vans for fifteen years. Holds calibration better than the cheap ones.

Against it: Same limitation as every TDS meter, and it looks like it was designed in 2009 because it was.

Check price on Amazonchecked
2026-08-31

Source: US EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System, retrieved 2026-08-31 from data.epa.gov. Public water system TX0710002. Nothing on this page is written by hand — if a figure is not in EPA’s response, it does not appear here. All cities.