Water system
Pickerington City
EPA ID OH2301512 · Fairfield County · 19,141 people served · owned by a local government
Pickerington City treats its own water from local buried-valley aquifer (wells near Diley Road).
The system's record
- Aquifer
- local wells (buried-valley aquifer, Diley Rd well field, Fairfield Co.)
- Active wells
- 5
- Serves
- 19,141 people · Fairfield County
- EPA ID
- OH2301512
About this area's water
Did you know
- Pickerington was laid out in 1815 under the name Jacksonville, honoring Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans; the townspeople petitioned in 1827 to rename it after the man who founded it, Abraham Pickering.
- Pickerington treats its well water with reverse osmosis — membrane treatment more associated with seawater than with central Ohio groundwater — and the salty reject stream is piped over to the sewage plant and blended…
- Water and sewer rates rise 3% automatically every April 1, so bills climb without a council vote.
- The four 'emergency' interconnects with Fairfield County Utilities are not decorative: in August 2025 the city pulled 512,000 gallons through one of them over four days.
Source: themunicipal.comdam.assets.ohio.govci.pickerington.oh.us
History6
- 1815Abraham Pickering has the town surveyed and laid out on September 15, 1815, naming it Jacksonville after Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans; by 1820 it had 49 residents.
- 1827Residents petition the Ohio legislature to rename the town Pickerington in Pickering's honor.
- 1881Pickerington incorporated as a village.
- 1988Pickerington's wastewater treatment plant constructed.
- 1991Pickerington certified as a city.
- 2009Wastewater treatment plant last upgraded.
Treatment & pressure
How it is treated
Five wells at the water plant site west of Diley Road draw from the Newark River buried-valley aquifer. The city treats the water at a reverse-osmosis plant that came online in 2011: iron and manganese are removed by aeration, detention and filtration, hardness is reduced by membrane treatment, and…
Source: dam.assets.ohio.govci.pickerington.oh.uscityscenecolumbus.com
Water pressure
Not published. No CCR, city budget document or Ohio EPA record reviewed states a system psi figure or maps pressure zones.
What it costs
$5.07 per 1,000 gallons
Typical household bill about $25 a month for water.
City of Pickerington utility billing schedule (current as of 2026). Water: $4.50 monthly service charge plus $5.07 per 1,000 gallons through 12,000 gallons in a month, and $7.30…
Source: ci.pickerington.oh.us
Water quality & impurities10
| Contaminant | Level | Limit | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Chlorine Range 0.90-1.23 ppm. | 1.11 ppm | 4 (MRDL) | 2025 |
| Total Trihalomethanes (TTHM) Range 10.4-11.2 ppb; about 14% of the standard. | 11.2 ppb | 80 | 2025 |
| Haloacetic Acids (HAA5) Range 0-3.4 ppb. | 3.4 ppb | 60 | 2025 |
| Fluoride Range 0.87-0.97 ppm. | 0.92 ppm | 4 | 2025 |
| Nitrate From the 2024 CCR; not re-reported in 2025. | 0.33 ppm | 10 | 2024 |
| Barium Reported in the 2024 CCR under reduced monitoring. | 0.027 ppm | 2 | 2023 |
| Gross alpha (excluding radon and… Reported in the 2024 CCR; radiologicals are on a reduced monitoring cycle. | 4.2 pCi/L | 15 | 2020 |
| Combined Radium 226/228 Reported in the 2024 CCR. | 1.1 pCi/L | 5 | 2020 |
| Lead (90th percentile) Zero of 30 samples above the action level; carried forward unchanged in the 2025 CCR. The city reports no lead… | 0.6 ppb | 15 (AL) | 2024 |
| Copper (90th percentile) Zero of 30 samples above the action level; carried forward in the 2025 CCR. | 0.327 ppm | 1.3 (AL) | 2024 |
Source: ci.pickerington.oh.usci.pickerington.oh.us
EPA compliance record
Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 0.6 ppb in 2024 (action level 15 ppb).
EPA record: no health-based violations since 2015.
1 violation of any kind logged since 2020: 1 for a report, record or notice that was missing, late or incomplete (the yearly water quality report, a public notice, lead line records).
Projects & plans6
Recent and current work
- Columbus interconnect · $150,000 · 2026 · planned
Construction funded in the adopted FY2026 budget, Water Department, Fund 509. Would add a City of Columbus connection alongside the four existing Fairfield… - Water Plant Capacity Plan / Improvement (Phase II design) · $600,000 · 2026 · planned
FY2026 budget line 509.503.55692; $900,000 was budgeted for the same line in 2025. Design only — no construction cost is published. - Sanitary sewer lining · $200,000 · 2026 · planned
Construction funded in the FY2026 budget, Sewer Department, Fund 511. - Tertiary disc filter replacement at the wastewater plant · $75,000 · 2026 · planned
Design funded in the FY2026 budget, Fund 511. Replaces the cloth-media disk filters in the plant's tertiary stage. - Sycamore Creek bank stabilization · $50,000 · 2026 · planned
Design/construction funded in the FY2026 budget, Stormwater Fund 513. Sycamore Creek is also the wastewater plant's receiving stream.
Source: ci.pickerington.oh.us
Planned or needed
- Water plant capacity expansion (construction phase following the 2025-2026 design work) · planned
Implied by two consecutive years of design funding ($900,000 in 2025, $600,000 for Phase II in 2026) under the 'Water Plant Capacity Plan/Improvement' line. No…
Source: ci.pickerington.oh.us
Supply stress
The city's CCRs rate the Newark River aquifer's susceptibility to contamination as moderate — the aquifer is sensitive and there are several potential contaminant sources inside the wellhead protection zone, which the Ohio EPA-approved Wellhead Protection Plan is meant to manage. The sharper pressure is capacity, not quality: the water…
Source: ci.pickerington.oh.usci.pickerington.oh.usci.pickerington.oh.us
Sewers
Sanitary
City-owned Pickerington WWTP at 525 Hill Road South, built in 1988 and last upgraded in 2009, with an average design flow of 3.2 MGD; recent annual median flows run about 2.5 MGD. It discharges to Sycamore Creek at river mile 4.5 (Great Miami-independent; Scioto basin, HUC 05060001-17-04). Treatment train: influent pumping, bar screen…
Storm
Ohio EPA states the City of Pickerington has 100% separate sewers — no combined sewers. The city runs its own storm water utility, billed at $4.50 a month for residential customers, with an Engineering Department storm water management program. The FY2026…
Source: dam.assets.ohio.govci.pickerington.oh.usci.pickerington.oh.us
Sourcesverified
Compiled from the utility's own reports and public records, then independently re-checked against primary sources.
Main supplier in 1 ZIP code
Serves
Main water supplier in 1 ZIP code
- 43147 · Pickerington43% of residents
Also present in 1 more ZIP code
- 43110 · Columbus and Canal Winchester0% of residents
Population-weighted resident shares; a ZIP code can have more than one system on record. Recomputed from each ZIP's own system list, not from the map's cached footprint.
Buys from · Sells to
Pickerington City does not buy water from another system on record; it treats its own source water.
1 system on record buys water from Pickerington City: Canal Pointe Industrial Park.
What the records show about Pickerington City
Who runs it
EPA's record describes Pickerington City as owned by a local government. It has 7,489 service connections and serves 19,141 people.
EPA classes it as a community water system, one that serves the same residents all year.
EPA's record says it has substantially implemented source water protection under Ohio's program, dating the program from 2025. Its office telephone on EPA's record is 614-833-2292.
Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS), water system record.
How the water is treated
EPA's treatment table registers these steps for Pickerington City: aeration, corrosion control, cartridge filtration, chlorine disinfection, dechlorination, iron and manganese removal, fluoridation, reverse osmosis, and sand or media filtration.
The list is what each system registered with EPA for treatment plants EPA still shows as active, and it can lag a plant upgrade.
Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) treatment table (EPA Envirofacts, pulled September 2026).
Violations
EPA's record shows no health-based violations for Pickerington City since 2015.
EPA logs 1 violation of any kind since 2020: 1 for a report, record or notice that was missing, late or incomplete (the yearly water quality report, a public notice, lead line records).
Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) violation records: health-based violations with compliance periods beginning in 2015 or later, all violations from 2020 or later (EPA Envirofacts, pulled September 2026).
Lead and copper at the tap
In the sampling period ending December 2024, the 90th-percentile lead result at Pickerington City was 0.6 ppb, under both the current 15 ppb action level and the 10 ppb level that applies from 2027.
EPA has 3 sampling periods on file for Pickerington City since 2016, the first ending in 2018; no period was above 10 ppb.
Every water system has to inventory its service lines, the pipes from the main to each building. In the inventory Pickerington City sent EPA, 6,671 lines are counted.
| Material | Lines |
|---|---|
| Lead | 0 |
| Galvanized, needing replacement | 0 |
| Unknown material | 0 |
| Not lead | 6,671 |
| All lines | 6,671 |
Systems sample taps in the homes most likely to have lead pipes or solder. The 90th-percentile result is the level nine in ten of the sampled homes were at or below. Lead comes mostly from service lines and house plumbing, not the source water, so a low result for the system does not clear an old house.
EPA's dashboard status for this inventory: reported all required service line types.
Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) lead and copper 90th-percentile results (EPA Envirofacts), sampling periods ending 2016 or later; EPA's service line inventory dashboard, Ohio's 2026 Q2 submission.
PFAS
EPA's fifth national round of testing (UCMR 5) took 3 samples of the water entering the pipes of Pickerington City in 2024 to 2025 and measured 29 PFAS. No PFAS was detected, PFOA and PFOS (federal limit 4 ng/L each) among them.
Ohio EPA's own statewide sampling tested 1 plant of Pickerington City (latest sample August 2020). Not one of the six PFAS tested (PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA, GenX and PFBS) was detected.
Ohio EPA's current sampling status map lists 1 plant of Pickerington City as sampled, most recently June 2026.
PFAS are the 'forever chemicals' from firefighting foam, plating shops and non-stick coatings. Results are for water leaving the plant, not your tap.
Source: EPA UCMR 5 occurrence data (final release, August 2026); Ohio EPA statewide PFAS sampling, 2019 to 2021, and its sampling status map.
Disinfection byproducts
Chlorine that disinfects water also reacts with organic matter to form byproducts. Two groups have federal limits: total trihalomethanes (TTHM, 80 µg/L) and five haloacetic acids (HAA5, 60 µg/L), judged on running yearly averages at each sampling site.
For TTHM, the average of Pickerington City's samples in 2019, the last year it was sampled, was 10.6 µg/L. The worst yearly average was 15.6 µg/L and the highest single sample was 18.8 µg/L, from 37 samples taken from 2012 to 2019.
For HAA5, the average in the last year sampled was 0 µg/L. The worst yearly average was 1 µg/L and the highest single sample was 15.7 µg/L, from 37 samples.
| Byproduct | Limit | Latest yearly average | Worst yearly average | Highest sample | Samples |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TTHM | 80 µg/L | 10.6 µg/L (2019) | 15.6 µg/L | 18.8 µg/L | 37 |
| HAA5 | 60 µg/L | 0 µg/L | 1 µg/L | 15.7 µg/L | 37 |
A yearly average of 0 means nothing was detected in that year's samples. EPA's file stops at 2019; Ohio EPA's Drinking Water Watch has newer results.
Source: EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019, distribution-system samples (non-detects counted as zero).
Nitrate, arsenic and radioactivity
Nitrate: the highest of 8 samples was 0.17 mg/L (as nitrogen) in 2018; in 2019, the last year sampled, nitrate was not detected. No sample was over the limit of 10 mg/L. Nitrate above 10 is unsafe for infants.
Arsenic was not detected in 2 samples (limit 10 µg/L).
| Contaminant | Samples | Highest result | Limit | Samples over limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nitrate (as nitrogen) | 8 | 0.17 mg/L | 10 mg/L | 0 |
| Arsenic | 2 | not detected | 10 µg/L | 0 |
Measured in finished water: at the plant's entry points and in the distribution system; raw well and intake samples are left out. Non-detects count as zero.
Source: EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019, finished water.
Solvents and fuels
EPA's file holds results for all six solvent and fuel compounds it checked. Benzene, carbon tetrachloride, 1,2-dichloroethane, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, and vinyl chloride were not detected in 2 samples each.
| Compound | Limit | Samples | Detected in | Highest result | Samples over limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benzene | 5 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Carbon tetrachloride | 5 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| 1,2-dichloroethane | 5 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Trichloroethylene (TCE) | 5 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Tetrachloroethylene (PCE) | 5 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Vinyl chloride | 2 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
"Not detected" means the lab's result was below what its method can measure, not that the compound is absent. Non-detects count as zero in the highest-result column.
Source: EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019, finished water.
Farm chemicals and metals
EPA's file holds results for 8 of the nine herbicides and metals it checked. Not detected: atrazine, alachlor, chromium, cadmium, barium, mercury, selenium, and thallium, in 2 samples each.
| Substance | Kind | Limit | Samples | Detected in | Highest result | Samples over limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atrazine | Farm chemical | 3 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Alachlor | Farm chemical | 2 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Chromium | Metal | 100 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Cadmium | Metal | 5 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Barium | Metal | 2,000 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Mercury | Metal | 2 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Selenium | Metal | 50 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
| Thallium | Metal | 2 µg/L | 2 | 0 of 2 | not detected | 0 |
Non-detects count as zero in the highest-result column.
Source: EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019, finished water.
Bacteria in the pipes
From 2012 to 2019, 1 of 1,869 routine total coliform samples taken in the distribution system at Pickerington City tested positive (0.05%); in 2019, the last year on file, 0 of 240 did. E. coli was never found in the 1 sample tested for it.
A positive coliform test is a warning sign, not a violation by itself. E. coli is a sign that human or animal waste may have reached the water. Coliform counts are routine samples only; E. coli counts include repeat samples.
Source: EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019, distribution-system presence/absence tests for total coliform and E. coli.
Fluoride
The Ohio Department of Health's report to the CDC (My Water's Fluoride) says Pickerington City adjusts the fluoride level to the recommended level for preventing tooth decay.
EPA's treatment table lists fluoridation among the steps at Pickerington City.
Measured fluoride: 0.99 mg/L on average at the plant's entry points in 2017 (in the range dentists aim for); samples ran from 0.89 to 0.99 mg/L across 2 samples in 2012 to 2019.
The recommended level for preventing tooth decay is 0.7 mg/L; the federal limit is 4 mg/L. The treatment list is what each system registered with EPA and can lag a plant upgrade.
Source: CDC My Water's Fluoride (fluoridation status as reported by the Ohio Department of Health, fetched September 2026); EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) treatment table; EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019, entry-point fluoride samples.
Lithium
Lithium was not detected in 2 UCMR 5 samples at Pickerington City, last sampled in 2025 (the method reports from 9 µg/L).
Lithium is not regulated. EPA's draft health reference level is 10 µg/L, and it occurs naturally in deep groundwater, so well systems in the northwest run highest.
Source: EPA UCMR 5 occurrence data (final release, August 2026), samples from 2023 to 2025.
Water and sewer bills
Ohio EPA's 2023 rate survey puts the water bill at Pickerington City for a household using 5,000 gallons a month at $304 a year, about $25 a month.
| Use | Water, per year | Sewer, per year |
|---|---|---|
| 2,500 gallons a month | $179 | not on file |
| 5,000 gallons a month | $304 | not on file |
| 8,000 gallons a month | $453 | not on file |
The survey lists it as “Pickerington”. These are inside-city rates and annual bills at the use shown.
Source: Ohio EPA 2023 Sewer and Water Rate Survey (Ohio State University, May 2025).
How well the service area is mapped
The service area drawn on the map for Pickerington City comes from the utility's own map.
Counting the people who live in the ZIP codes it overlaps, this atlas estimates 19,639 residents are inside the boundary, 103% of the 19,141 people Pickerington City reports serving.
The resident count is an estimate from 2020 Census ZIP-code populations, not a count of customers.
Source: EPA Service Area Boundaries; resident estimate by this atlas from ZIP-code overlap.
On the map
Show this system's territory on the map — 2 ZIP codes in all.
Sources
U.S. EPA SDWIS and Community Water System Service Area Boundaries (v3, 2026), Ohio EPA primacy data, 2020 census blocks: the system serving most residents, traced through purchases to the treating utility; Ohio EPA 2023 Sewer and Water Rate Survey (Ohio State, May 2025) for household bills; Ohio EPA DEFA loan awards since 2016 for the loans paragraph · EPA SDWIS · EPA service area boundaries · Ohio EPA drinking water · Ohio EPA rate survey
EPA's own record for this system: Enforcement and Compliance History report for OH2301512 (EPA ECHO).
Pickerington City's own pages: ci.pickerington.oh.us
Notable facts: themunicipal.com, dam.assets.ohio.gov, ci.pickerington.oh.us, ci.pickerington.oh.us
History: themunicipal.com, en.wikipedia.org, dam.assets.ohio.gov, ci.pickerington.oh.us
Water quality: ci.pickerington.oh.us, ci.pickerington.oh.us
Planned work: ci.pickerington.oh.us
Capital projects: ci.pickerington.oh.us
Rates: ci.pickerington.oh.us
Sewers: dam.assets.ohio.gov, ci.pickerington.oh.us, ci.pickerington.oh.us
Treatment: dam.assets.ohio.gov, ci.pickerington.oh.us, cityscenecolumbus.com, wwdmag.com
Supply stress: ci.pickerington.oh.us, ci.pickerington.oh.us, ci.pickerington.oh.us