Topic

Getting Started

Editorial intro (operator may revise)

Foundational explainers. If you are new to thinking about your water, start here. We orient you to what testing is for, how to read what you find, and how to tell a health concern from an aesthetic one.

Articles in this topic

Health-based vs. aesthetic water concerns

Not every water problem is a health problem. The EPA regulates drinking water under two separate frameworks — enforceable Primary Standards for contaminants with known or suspected health effects, and non-enforceable Secondary Standards for taste, smell, color, and how water interacts with plumbing. Knowing which kind of concern you have changes what's at stake, what testing makes sense, and what to do about it.

May 17, 2026Read article →

Should I test my water? How, and what do the results mean?

Whether you should test your water depends on what you're trying to find out, where it comes from, and what's already known about it. For most municipal customers, the utility's annual Consumer Confidence Report is the starting point. For private well owners, testing is essential on a regular schedule. This article walks through how to decide, what to test, where to send samples, and how to read the result.

May 17, 2026Read article →

Water quality problems — overview and hub

Water quality problems in North Carolina and southern Virginia fall into a small number of recurring categories — aesthetic issues, scale and hardness, infrastructure concerns from corrosive water, microbial contamination on private wells, and a smaller set of health-based concerns including lead, PFAS, disinfection byproducts, and contaminants concentrated in specific geologic zones. This article is a starting point for readers without a specific concern in mind.

May 17, 2026Read article →

Well water vs. municipal water — different problems, different solutions

Where your water comes from changes almost everything about how to think about it. Municipal water is monitored, regulated, and treated by a utility before it reaches your home; private well water is your responsibility from the aquifer to the tap. Each situation has its own typical problems, oversight structure, and decision points about testing and treatment.

May 17, 2026Read article →

These articles touch on getting started as a related subject.

Also relevant

Reverse osmosis — under-counter and whole-home

Reverse osmosis forces water through a semipermeable membrane that removes a broad range of dissolved contaminants — including PFAS, nitrate, arsenic, and dissolved solids — producing the highest-purity water of the common residential technologies. RO comes in two configurations: under-counter, which treats one tap, and whole-home, which treats all the water entering the house. This article explains how RO works, what each configuration does, what each costs, what the trade-offs are, and how to think about whether RO fits your situation — including for readers whose municipal water is already good.

June 10, 2026Read article →

Water treatment types — an overview of your options

Water treatment technologies each do a specific job — softeners remove hardness, reverse osmosis removes a broad range of dissolved contaminants for high purity, carbon filtration removes chlorine and organics, UV disinfects, pH neutralizers correct acidic water. No single technology does everything, and matching treatment to the actual problem — confirmed by testing — is the whole game. This article is an overview of the major options, with honest framing that many readers, particularly those on the region's softer surface-water municipal supplies, need less treatment than the market suggests.

June 10, 2026Read article →

EPA drinking water standards — what they protect and what they don't

The EPA sets federally enforceable standards for contaminants in public drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The standards protect public health at the scale of the entire United States and reflect a deliberate balance between health protection and the practical reality of treating water at thousands of utilities. This article explains how the standards are structured, how they get set, what they cover, what they leave out, and how to read your own water's situation against them.

May 17, 2026Read article →

EWG drinking water standards — what they are and how to read them alongside EPA standards

The Environmental Working Group publishes health-based guidelines for drinking water contaminants that are typically more conservative than EPA's federally enforceable Maximum Contaminant Levels. The guidelines are grounded in legitimate scientific sources and have measurably moved regulatory attention to contaminants like PFAS. They are not peer-reviewed regulatory standards. This article explains what EWG's guidelines are, where the numbers come from, what they do well, where they have limits, and how to read your water's situation against both EWG and EPA benchmarks.

May 17, 2026Read article →

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