U.S. population served with nitrate-contaminated water

Approximately 60 million people in the United States were served by large and very large drinking water systems with elevated levels of nitrate between 2017 and 2019. The most affected state was California, where approximately 22.7 million consumed drinking water with high nitrate levels in the period. This represents more than half of the state's population. The second most affected state during this period was Arizona, where the number of people served nitrate-contaminated drinking water was approximately 5.2 million.
Farm run-off is a major cause of water pollution, with croplands accounting for 60 percent of global nitrate contamination in groundwater.

Population served by large or very large drinking water systems with elevated nitrate levels in the United States between 2017 and 2019, by select state (in millions)

Characteristic	Number of people in millions
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-
-	-

Download

Source

Show detailed source information?

Already a member?

Source

Use Ask Statista Research Service

Release date

November 2021

More information

Region

United States

Survey time period

2017 to 2019

Supplementary notes

Analysis based on 757 large or very large community water systems that had at least one detection of nitrate at or above 3 milligrams per liter (mg/L), between 2017 and 2019. Of these systems, 52% used groundwater and 48% used surface water.
Only states with more than one million people served by a large or very large drinking water system with elevated nitrate levels are shown.
The EPA considers any water system to be “large” if it serves between 10,001 and 100,000 people, and “very large” systems serve more than 100,000 people.

Citation formats