Editorial Policy

1. Editorial Mission

US water utilities are local and varied. There are roughly 50,000 public water systems in the United States, plus tens of thousands of community water systems, transient non-community water systems, and non-transient non-community water systems regulated under SDWA. Each has its own billing cycle, payment methods, rate ordinance, customer service hours, emergency line, and CCR. We exist to give US ratepayers, renters, landlords looking up tenant service responsibilities, and small-business owners plain-English access to each utility’s administrative details — without auto-scraped staleness, without misleading branding, and without any confusion between utility directory information and FCRA-style consumer-report information.

2. Source Hierarchy

We work to a six-tier source hierarchy, where higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict:

• Tier 1 — Primary authority: The water utility’s own published website, including the customer service page, billing portal landing page, autopay enrollment page, CCR page, and rate schedule.
• Tier 2 — EPA SDWIS and state primacy agency: The EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) for the PWS ID and the state primacy agency for SDWA enforcement details and CCR archives.
• Tier 3 — State PUC / PSC: For investor-owned utilities, the state Public Utility Commission or Public Service Commission docket page for the current rate case and tariff schedule.
• Tier 4 — Local governing body: City council ordinance archive, county board minutes, or PUD commission minutes for municipal and special-district utility rate ordinances.
• Tier 5 — Industry associations: AWWA (American Water Works Association), NACWA (National Association of Clean Water Agencies), NRWA (National Rural Water Association), ASDWA (Association of State Drinking Water Administrators) — for industry-standard procedures and definitions.
• Tier 6 — Billing-vendor documentation: Vendor docs from Tyler MUNIS, Cayenta, InvoiceCloud, Paymentus, Harris ERP, CIS Infinity, MUNIS, and similar — useful only for understanding the portal vendor a utility uses, never as the authoritative source for the utility’s own information.

Full detail on each tier is on our Sources & Methodology page.

3. Verification Workflow

1. Identify the right authoritative source. Utility website, EPA SDWIS, state primacy agency, state PUC, local governing body archives.
2. Verify URLs are live. A human editor clicks every link before publication, including the billing portal landing page, autopay enrollment page, and current-year CCR.
3. Cross-check the billing address against USPS data and the utility’s own contact page.
4. Identify the regulator(s). State primacy agency for SDWA. State PUC for IOU rates. Local governing body for municipal/PUD rates. Multiple regulators apply to most utilities.
5. Verify the billing-portal vendor — we note when the portal uses InvoiceCloud, Paymentus, Tyler MUNIS, Cayenta, CIS Infinity, Harris ERP, MUNIS, or another vendor.
6. Verify the CCR publication. Required annually by July 1 under the SDWA Consumer Confidence Report Rule (40 CFR Part 141 Subpart O); we link to the most recent edition.
7. Dial-test the customer service and emergency lines. Quarterly cycle. We confirm the line answers and routes correctly — without generating any false emergency call.
8. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end, including a fresh check on the “this is not the utility” notice, the 911 / Poison Control framework, and the FCRA non-CRA disclosure.

4. Independence

uswaterbillguide.org/ is independent. We are not affiliated with the EPA, any state primacy agency, any state Public Utility Commission, AWWA, NACWA, NRWA, ASDWA, the CFPB, the FTC, any specific water utility, any water-utility holding company (American Water, Essential Utilities, Aqua, SJW, California Water Service, etc.), or any billing-technology vendor. No regulator, utility, or vendor reviews our content prior to publication. No payment is accepted for editorial coverage of any specific utility or any specific service.

5. Advertising Relationships

We are funded by display advertising. Our editorial content is never altered to favor any advertiser. We decline advertising in these categories:

• “Lookup” services that misrepresent themselves as offering FCRA-compliant tenant screening, utility-deposit decisions, or credit decisions to consumers or landlords
• Operations that misrepresent themselves as the EPA, a state primacy agency, a state PUC, or a specific utility
• Unregulated bill-payment services with hidden fees or aggressive collection terms
• Predatory utility-deposit financing
• Predatory home-warranty schemes targeting utility-system repairs
• Predatory water-quality testing schemes that misrepresent EPA action thresholds
• Water-filtration vendors that misrepresent CCR data or EPA standards
• Gambling, payday lending, adult content, or other categories incompatible with our utility-information context

6. We Do Not Publish FCRA-Style Information

7. Corrections

If a directory entry is wrong — billing portal vendor changed, customer service phone number changed, rate ordinance was adopted, autopay procedure changed, CCR publication URL changed, LCRR service line inventory page deployed — we want to know and we want to fix it. Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue. We process corrections within 7 business days, with a 48-hour expedited path for broken billing-portal URLs and out-of-date emergency phone numbers. We add a small editorial note when a substantive correction is made.

8. The Billing-Vendor Migration Cycle

US water utilities migrate billing systems and payment processors on a steady cycle. Common migrations we have tracked: utilities moving from MUNIS to Tyler MUNIS, from in-house portals to Paymentus, from Paymentus to InvoiceCloud, from Tyler MUNIS to Cayenta, and from Harris ERP to CIS Infinity. Each migration typically changes the billing portal URL, the autopay enrollment procedure, and (sometimes) the convenience fee structure. We re-verify portal URLs on a quarterly cycle and re-verify on each major utility-vendor announcement. The vendor change is rarely announced to customers; we often notice from a billing-portal URL change before the utility makes a customer announcement, and we update.

9. Authors and Contributors

Site content is written and reviewed by editors who have spent time researching and writing about US water utility regulation, the SDWA framework, and customer-facing utility procedures. Specialist subject-matter reviewers — including AWWA-affiliated water professionals, retired utility customer service supervisors, and water-utility-rate consultants — are consulted on substantive editorial questions, particularly after major federal rule changes (EPA’s PFAS rule of April 2024, LCRR / LCRI updates, CCR Rule revisions). We do not publish ghost-written content from third parties without editorial review.

10. AI and Automation

We use software tools for spell-check, grammar review, and routine drafting assistance. However, no editorial fact, URL, telephone number, billing portal vendor, regulator attribution, address, or rate schedule reference on uswaterbillguide.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the utility's own published page. Every utility entry passes through human editorial review. We do not auto-generate or auto-publish utility entries. We do not use AI to generate FCRA-style content (which we do not publish at all). We do not use AI to write or interpret CCR data; CCR information is verified directly against the utility’s published CCR.

11. Contact

For corrections, editorial questions, or sourcing inquiries: info@uswaterbillguide.org