Monroe City

• Monroe's tap water is a blend of two very different sources that meet before they reach the city: Ohio River surface water from Greater Cincinnati Water Works and Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer groundwater from…
• Monroe holds emergency interconnections with the City of Middletown and with Warren County Water, and used no water from either during 2025.
• The Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer is watched over by the Hamilton to New Baltimore Groundwater Consortium, which the county utility credits with an award-winning groundwater protection program.
• Greater Cincinnati Water Works' granular activated carbon treatment on Ohio River water lets it use substantially less chlorine than a conventional plant would need.
• A 29% wholesale increase from Butler County, which the city absorbed for a year before passing it on, pushed Monroe's inside-city water rate from $8.23 to $10.61 per 1,000 gallons on January 1, 2026.

Source: monroeohio.orgmonroeohio.orgmonroeohio.org

• 2020Radiological sampling at the City of Hamilton groundwater source behind Monroe's supply: alpha emitters at 2.8 pCi/L and radium-228 at 0.673 pCi/L, both well under their MCLs and still the current…
• 2023UCMR5 PFAS sampling at the Butler County interties finds PFBS at 3.3 ppt and PFHxS at 2.4 ppt (range ND-4.7) at the Hamilton Intertie-Liberty Fairfield; nothing detected at the Cincinnati…
• 2024Monroe more than doubles its stormwater fee on February 23, from $3.00 to $5.00 a month for residences, with commercial and industrial fees doubling at the same time, after concluding that rates set…
• 2025Monroe holds an unconditional Ohio EPA license to operate its water system; the city completes UCMR5 with every result below the minimum reporting level.
• 2026Monroe's inside-city water rate jumps from $8.23 to $10.61 per 1,000 gallons on January 1 - about 29% - after Butler County sharply raised the wholesale price it charges the city; Monroe had deferred…

Source: monroeohio.orgmonroeohio.orgmonroeohio.org

How it is treated

Monroe treats no water of its own. It buys finished water from Butler County Water & Sewer - Butler County Water District 2 - and distributes it. BCWS in turn buys surface water from the City of Cincinnati (Greater Cincinnati Water Works), drawn from the Ohio River and treated with granular…

Source: monroeohio.orgmonroeohio.org

Water pressure

Not published. Neither Monroe's 2025 CCR nor its water service, water quality or public works pages give a system pressure in psi, and no pressure-zone or storage description is…

Source: monroeohio.orgmonroeohio.orgmonroeohio.org

$10.61 per 1,000 gallons

Typical household bill about $50 a month for water.

Effective January 1, 2026, inside city limits: $10.61 per 1,000 gallons up to 20,000 gallons and $12.28 above 20,000 (up from $8.23 and $9.52 in 2025). Outside city limits: $17.50…

Source: monroeohio.orgmonroeohio.org

Source: monroeohio.org

EPA compliance record

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 1.6 ppb in 2025 (action level 15 ppb).

EPA record: no health-based violations since 2015.

6 violations of any kind logged since 2020, 6 of them paperwork (monitoring, reporting, public notice or consumer report).

EPA compliance record · Hamilton Public Water System (treats the water)

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 2 ppb in 2024 (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

• Brittany Heights catch basin rehabilitation and N. Sands Ave. / Deneen Ave.-Britton Ln. storm pipe replacement · 2023 · completed
  Three stormwater jobs let as a combined bid, replacing rusted corrugated metal pipe and rehabilitating catch basins. Monroe does not publish costs for its…
• Old Street storm rehabilitation · 2022 · completed
  New storm sewer, catch basins and 140 linear feet of 12-inch pipe, plus repair or replacement of 19 catch basins and cleaning and re-grading of 2,300 feet of…
• Rosemont Park detention pond · 2021 · completed
  Built in autumn 2021 specifically to address flooding issues. Delivered alongside a Lawton Avenue box culvert for stream capacity and ditch cleaning and…
• Hamilton Lebanon Rd / Heritage Green Drive ditch realignment and Overbrook Drive / N. Main Street underdrain · 2020 · completed
  Included about 900 feet of perforated pipe installation. No cost published.

Source: monroeohio.org

Both of Monroe's upstream sources are rated highly susceptible to contamination by Ohio EPA, for opposite reasons. The Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer feeding Hamilton's North and South Wellfields is an unconfined sand and gravel aquifer with depth to water less than 30 feet, flat topography and very sandy soils that let a large share…

Source: monroeohio.orgmonroeohio.org

Sanitary

Butler County Water & Sewer owns and maintains the sanitary sewer system serving Monroe and sets the sewer rates; the city bills customers, charging sewage on metered water use. Residential rates effective January 1, 2023 are $3.36 per 1,000 gallons where no lift station is involved and $3.70 per 1,000 gallons where one is, up from $3.27…

Storm

Unlike the sanitary system, the storm sewer is Monroe's own utility. The residential fee doubled from $3.00 to $5.00 a month effective February 23, 2024, with commercial and industrial fees - scaled by impervious surface area, starting at $10.00 a month for…

Source: monroeohio.orgmonroeohio.orgmonroeohio.org

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