Kent City

• Kent's tap water was named Best Tasting Municipality Water at the 1995 Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, and Mayor Kathleen Chandler carried it onto the March 3 episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
• Kent's water has earned six awards at Berkeley Springs since it first entered in 1995, including first-, second- and third-place honors, most recently fifth place in the municipal category in 2011.
• Kent sits on the Cuyahoga River but does not drink it — the city draws entirely from the Breakneck Creek Wellfield in a buried valley aquifer, and one well, No. 13, is a rock well tapping a water-bearing sandstone…
• The plant softens hard water aggressively: raw water hardness averaged 304 mg/l in 2025 and came out of the tap at 101 mg/l.
• Kent keeps an emergency pipe connection to the City of Ravenna that it typically uses only one or two days a year — 917,000 gallons over three days in 2023, and not a single gallon in 2025.

Source: kentohio.govpatch.comen.wikipedia.org

• 1973Ohio EPA detail plan approval established chlorine storage for eighteen 1-ton cylinders on the loading dock next to the chlorine room — an arrangement still in use in 2025 and now cited by Ohio EPA…
• 1995Kent's tap water was named Best Tasting Municipality Water at the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, and Mayor Kathleen Chandler appeared with it on the March 3 episode of The Tonight Show…
• 2011Kent placed fifth in the municipal water category at Berkeley Springs, its sixth award from the competition since first entering in 1995.
• 2023Ohio EPA identified four significant deficiencies at the Kent water system on January 24, all still under corrective action; separately, water and sewer rates rose 9% in January 2023 with the city…
• 2025The first of two new wells was drilled and pump tested; plant valves (sludge, lagoon and a 24-inch filter drain) were replaced and in-line pH and chlorine probes were added to the treatment process.

Source: kentohio.govkentohio.govpatch.com

How it is treated

Groundwater is pumped from several wells close to the Water Plant in the 'Breakneck Creek Wellfield,' which taps the Buried Valley Aquifer; the exception is Well No. 13, a rock well tapping a water-bearing sandstone formation. Treatment at the City of Kent Water Treatment Plant includes softening…

Source: kentohio.govkentohio.gov

Water pressure

Not published. No psi figure appears in the 2023 or 2025 Consumer Confidence Reports or on the city's water distribution pages.

Source: kentohio.govkentohio.gov

$6.26 per 1,000 gallons

Typical household bill about $31 a month for water.

CAUTION ON UNITS: Kent bills per 1,000 CUBIC FEET, not per 1,000 gallons. The January 2023 rate ordinance set water at $46.83 per 1,000 cubic feet (up 9% from $42.97) with a…

Source: yahoo.com

Source: kentohio.gov

EPA compliance record

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 0 ppb in 2023 (action level 15 ppb).

EPA record: no health-based violations since 2015.

1 violation of any kind logged since 2020, 1 of them paperwork (monitoring, reporting, public notice or consumer report).

Recent and current work

• Wellfield rehabilitation of an existing well · 2023 · completed
  Completed June 2023 to add redundancy while other wells undergo maintenance. No cost published.
• Wellfield test drilling program · 2023 · completed
  Test drillings completed in fall 2023 with favorable results; the city stated adding more wells to the raw water supply would be necessary in coming years. No…
• First of two new production wells · 2025 · completed
  Drilled and pump tested in 2025; expected to add significant redundancy to the Breakneck Creek Wellfield. No cost published.
• Water treatment plant valve replacements and in-line probes · 2025 · completed
  Sludge valves, lagoon valves and a 24-inch filter drain valve replaced; in-line pH probes and a chlorine probe added to the treatment process. No cost…

Source: kentohio.govkentohio.gov

Planned or needed

• Second new production well · 2026 · under construction
  Being drilled in 2026 to complete the two-well redundancy program. No cost published.
• 500,000-gallon pedisphere tank rehabilitation and painting · 2026 · under construction
  Ohio EPA significant deficiency identified 1/24/2023 (unscreened venting, badly corroded access-tube ladder, poor interior and exterior coatings). Under…
• 400,000-gallon ground storage tank rehabilitation and painting · 2026 · planned
  Ohio EPA significant deficiency identified 1/24/2023 (anchor bolt nuts, internal overflow piping needing an external air-gap discharge, substantial interior…
• Chlorine gas to liquid sodium hypochlorite conversion study · 2026 · planned
  Ohio EPA flagged outdoor storage of 1-ton chlorine cylinders as an unacceptable risk to operators and the surrounding public. AECOM is under contract to…

Source: kentohio.gov

Ohio EPA's source water assessment rates Kent's supply as HIGHLY susceptible to contamination: the sand and gravel aquifer has a shallow depth to water of less than 15 feet, the topography is flat with loam and sandy-loam soils that let a moderate to significant share of precipitation infiltrate, no confining layer exists in many areas…

Source: kentohio.govyahoo.com

Sanitary

The City of Kent's Water Reclamation Division operates its own Water Reclamation Facility handling residential, commercial and industrial wastewater. Design capacity is 5 MGD with a peak hydraulic capacity of 15 MGD. Treatment is built around chemical removal of phosphorus and biological removal of ammonia along with conventional…

Storm

Not confirmed. No separate stormwater utility, MS4 program page or storm sewer description for Kent was located in available sources.

Source: kentohio.orgkentohio.gov

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