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The drinking water provided by Prince William Water to serve new development in the western service area comes from public sources in the Potomac River and Lake Manassas, not from groundwater wells. Hence, public water supply does not affect ground water supply for private wells. 

As a property owner, you are responsible for replacing the line from the meter to your house and the premise plumbing. If the customer portion of the service line is determined to be lead, the customer may choose to replace it at their expense but should coordinate the replacement with Prince William Water in advance to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations. The Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project’s (SERCAP) Residential Lead Service Line Program provides up to $2,500 in grant funding toward the costs of replacing lead service lines coming into the home for eligible low-to-moderate income homeowners. Contact SERCAP at 540-345-1184 or visit online at https://sercap.org for more information. If you need more information about potential financing solutions or if you are planning to replace the portion of the service line that you own, please contact us at leadandcopper@pwwater.org or 703-335-7950.

All systems must make their lead service line inventories available to the public. In addition, all systems serving greater than 50,000 people must make their lead service line inventory publicly available. 

Once VDH approves the line inventory, Prince William Water will identify lead and copper sampling locations in areas that contain lead service lines. Also, 20 percent of the elementary schools and child care facilities in our service area will be sampled each year for the first five years. If the distribution system exceeds the 90th percentile for the EPA’s lead action level of 15 parts per billion, Prince William Water will be required to replace 3% of the lead service lines in the distribution system annually or until the system has two consecutive monitoring periods where all results are below the action level. 

When lead testing is performed as required by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 90 percent of the samples must contain less than 10 parts per billion (ppb) of lead. EPA has established an action level for lead in water of 10 ppb, meaning that a water system with more than 10 ppb of lead in 10 percent of its samples may require changes to the water treatment process, replacement of lead service lines and public outreach. Fairfax Water and the City of Manassas, Prince William Water’s water suppliers, have been testing for lead in accordance with the Lead and Copper Rule since 1992 and have consistently tested below the action level established by the rule. 

The EPA action level of 10 parts per billion of lead in drinking water was established based on reasonable risk assessments. It is the level that requires additional corrective and educational actions but does not necessarily directly correlate to increased blood-lead levels. Blood-lead levels reflect a variety of factors, such as age; exposure to dusts, paint chips or soil containing lead; and the amount of water consumed daily. For women, pregnancy can also affect blood-lead levels. Nationally, the biggest source of increased blood-lead levels in children is the ingestion of lead-based paint chips. 

A typical residential customer uses 5,000 gallons of water monthly, which results in the following monthly water and sewer bills for the years 2025, 2026 and 2027. The new rates take effect on January 1 of each year. 

Prince William Water has identified a group of commercial water customers whose usage patterns vary significantly from the overall commercial customer class. This group of customers is comprised of large (at least 50 Equivalent Residential Units ERUs) industrial water users. The majority of these customers are using water for cooling and typically have a separate sewer meter.  

The volume of water used by industrial customers varies significantly from month to month and is usually seasonal.  The annual average daily usage per ERU for industrial customers is lower than residential and commercial customers; however, the maximum daily water demand is much higher than that of residential and commercial customers. This is important because Prince William Water purchases water capacity and designs its water system based on daily demand. 

Because this customer group has different usage patterns and impacts on the system, Prince William Water created an industrial customer class. Since Prince William Water purchases water capacity and designs its water system based on maximum daily demand, Prince William Water is also basing ERU calculations on maximum daily demand for industrial customers.

Prince William Water sets availability fees to recover the cost of expanding water and sewer systems required to serve new customers, together with the cost of development administration.  

The availability fees for the next three calendar years are:  

No, Prince William Water does not receive any tax dollars from Prince William County Government. Prince William Water is funded solely by User Rates and Fees and Developer Rates and Fees.  

Setting rates three years at a time minimizes rate shock to customers and allows for strategic financial decision making.