Every year, Charleston Water System publishes a water quality report (sometimes called a Consumer Confidence Report) that breaks down what's in the water coming out of your tap. Most people never read it. That's fair, it's not exactly light reading. But there's some useful information in there for any Charleston area business thinking about what its team is actually drinking.

Here's the short version, and what it means for you.

The good news first

Charleston Water System has no health-based violations on record. The utility treats surface water from the Edisto River and Bushy Park Reservoir, and it meets every federal and state standard it's required to meet. That's not nothing. A lot of municipal systems around the country can't say that.
The utility has also been voluntarily testing for PFAS, the "forever chemicals" you've probably seen in the news, since 2019, years before it was required to. That's a system that's paying attention, not one waiting to be told.

What's still worth knowing

Meeting the legal limit isn't the same as having nothing in the water. A couple of things show up in Charleston's water, and in just about every chlorinated municipal system in the country, that are worth understanding:

Disinfection byproducts. When Charleston Water System disinfects water with chlorine, it's doing exactly what it should, killing bacteria and pathogens before that water reaches your building. But chlorine reacting with naturally occurring organic material in the source water creates byproducts like trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and haloacetic acids (HAA5). Charleston's levels stay under the federal limits. They're also not zero. This is a tradeoff every chlorinated water system in the country makes, not something unique to Charleston.

Trace PFAS. Monitoring has picked up low, trace-level detections of PFAS compounds in the Charleston area, consistent with what's turning up almost everywhere water gets tested these days. These chemicals were used for decades in everything from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam, and they don't break down easily. South Carolina doesn't currently have a state standard for PFAS, and federal rulemaking has been in flux, but the levels being found locally are low. Charleston Waterkeeper and other local voices have pushed for stricter limits, arguing zero is the only truly safe number. Reasonable people can land in different places on that.

Lead. Charleston Water System's own testing hasn't shown a system-wide lead problem. Where lead shows up in drinking water, it's almost always from old plumbing, service lines, or fixtures inside a specific building, not from water leaving the treatment plant. If your building or office park is older, that's a "know your pipes" issue more than a "know your utility" issue.

None of this is cause for alarm. It's cause for a second layer of filtration if you want one, especially in a workplace where you're serving water to employees and clients all day.

Where point-of-use filtration fits in

This is exactly the gap reverse osmosis filtration is built to close. An RO system doesn't care whether what's in the water is a disinfection byproduct, a trace PFAS compound, or lead picked up from an old pipe somewhere between the water main and your break room faucet. It pushes water through a membrane fine enough to catch all of it, then delivers water that's cleaner than what the report describes, not because the utility did anything wrong, but because point-of-use filtration is simply a finer net than a municipal treatment plant can practically run for an entire city.

That's the water Hydrate of the Carolinas dispensers put out. Reverse osmosis filtration, plus a closed system that never lets that filtered water sit exposed to open air the way a 5-gallon jug does once it's uncapped and loaded into a cooler. Combine that with fewer delivery trucks and a lot less plastic going into the waste stream, and it's a straightforward upgrade for any Charleston office still relying on jug delivery.

You don't need to be alarmed by your water quality report to want better water. You just need to know what's actually being measured, and what your options are.

Curious what your team would think? Ask us about our one-week free trial and see the difference for yourself. 

Read the full 2026 Water Quality Report from Charleston Water System.

Sources: Charleston Water System water quality reporting, EPA UCMR5 PFAS monitoring data, and Charleston Waterkeeper public comments as reported by Live 5 News (Feb. 2025).