Middletown City

• Middletown's wells can produce up to 20 million gallons a day, but the plant delivers only about 8.3 million, leaving the system running well under its capacity.
• PFOS turned up at 4.32 parts per trillion in 2024 - just above the 4 ppt federal limit EPA set that same year, and still listed as 'unregulated' in the city's report.
• Ohio EPA rates Middletown's aquifer highly susceptible partly because the water table sits less than 15 feet down with no clay layer capping it.
• The plant softens its water with lime, a process that leaves the finished water noticeably less hard than the raw groundwater it starts from.

• 2011US EPA and DOJ Clean Water Act consent decree: $55,000 penalty, $200,000 canal-sediment project, and a long-term control plan cutting overflows to six CSO events a year.
• 2024PFOS measured at 0.00432 ppb (4.32 ppt) in city water, marginally above the 4 ppt federal PFOS limit EPA finalized that year.
• 2025City issued its annual lead service line notifications on time but received an Ohio EPA Notice of Violation for filing the verification of those notices late.

How it is treated

Wells in the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer produce up to 20 MGD. Raw well water goes to the Columbia Avenue plant, where it is softened with lime, disinfected with chlorine, then filtered through dual-media filters; fluoride is added to prevent tooth decay.

Water pressure

not published; no citywide average psi figure or pressure-zone data found in city sources.

No current per-unit water rate was found in accessible city sources; reported 2023 approval and 2026 postponement of an increase could not be substantiated.

EPA compliance record

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 1.1 ppb in 2025 (action level 15 ppb).

EPA record: no health-based violations since 2015.

2 violations of any kind logged since 2020, 2 of them paperwork (monitoring, reporting, public notice or consumer report).

Recent and current work

• Sewer system rehabilitation, WWTP upgrades and CSO controls under the 2011 Clean Water Act consent decree · 2011 · under construction
  EPA states the decree work runs on a 25-year schedule, so it is ongoing rather than complete.
• Lead service line inventory and public notification · 2025 · completed
  Inventory published as a searchable ArcGIS map; annual service-line notices issued to customers in 2025.

The Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer is productive and not drought-vulnerable like a surface system, but Ohio EPA rates it highly susceptible: no protective clay layer, water less than 15 feet down, and past detections of human-made contaminants. PFOS at 4.32 ppt already edges over the new 4 ppt MCL.

Sanitary

City-run plant rated 26 MGD and averaging about 14.5 MGD, discharging to the Great Miami River across roughly 342 miles of sewer with 8 combined sewer overflow outfalls; a 2011 US EPA/DOJ consent decree requires a long-term control plan cutting overflows to six events a year.

Storm

Partly combined system with 8 CSO outfalls to the Great Miami River, being addressed under the 2011 consent decree's long-term control plan. No separate stormwater utility fee was confirmed.

Compiled from the utility's own reports and public records, then independently re-checked against primary sources.