Terms of Use

Terms of Use

Last updated 14 September 2026 · Applies to h2ohwater.org and the H₂Oh! web app

1. Agreement to these terms

By using H₂Oh! you agree to these Terms of Use and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the service. You must be at least 13 years old to use H₂Oh!, and if you are under 18 you should use it with a parent or guardian.

2. What H₂Oh! is and is not

H₂Oh! is an independent information tool. It collects drinking-water records that utilities are already required to report to regulators, puts them in one place, and explains them in ordinary language.

H₂Oh! is not a government agency, a water utility, a testing or analytical laboratory, a healthcare provider, a medical or public-health service, an emergency notification service, or a substitute for any of them. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or acting on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, any state or local agency, any university, any laboratory, any standards body, or any water system described on the site. Where we name an agency or a standard, we are citing a source — not claiming its approval.

H₂Oh! has never tested your water. No measurement shown anywhere on this site was taken by us. Every number originates with a utility, a regulator, or a certified laboratory acting under a regulatory programme, and was published by a government agency. Any statement implying otherwise would be wrong, and we would want to know about it.

3. Accuracy and public data

We take care with the data, and it will still sometimes be wrong. That is not false modesty — it follows from how these records work:

• The records lag reality. EPA violation data is typically refreshed on a 30–90 day cycle. Lead and copper sampling results can be one to three years old, because that is how often the sampling itself is required. A boil-water notice can take a day or more to appear in a federal or state database after a utility has issued it locally.
• The records can be incomplete or mistaken. Source agencies correct their own data. A system may have failed to report something. An absence of violations in a database is not proof that nothing happened.
• We cache. We hold agency data for up to 24 hours to keep the service fast and to avoid overwhelming public APIs, so what you see may be slightly behind the source.
• Coverage is partial. We cover a set of U.S. cities, not every public water system, and not private wells.
• Some factors are not scored at all. Where we lack a usable data feed — PFAS is the current example — we say so and leave the factor out rather than assume the result is good.

Always treat the original source as authoritative. We link to it wherever we can, and your utility’s annual Consumer Confidence Report is the document written specifically for you.

4. No professional advice

Nothing on H₂Oh! — including scores, grades, category labels, explanations, household guidance, filtration information, and answers from the Water Assistant — is medical advice, health advice, legal advice, engineering advice, real-estate advice, or regulatory determination. It is general information about public records.

The Water Assistant is an AI feature. It can be confidently wrong. Do not rely on it for any decision that affects someone’s health.

If you have a health concern about your water, talk to your doctor, your local health department, or your utility. If you need to know what is in the water at your specific tap — which is affected by your building’s own plumbing and service line, things no public record covers — have it tested by a state-certified laboratory.

5. Availability

H₂Oh! is provided free and on an as-available basis. We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of it at any time, with or without notice. Data feeds we depend on may go down, change shape, or disappear. Do not rely on H₂Oh! to warn you about anything. We are not an alerting service of record, and no absence of a warning on this site should be read as an assurance that nothing is wrong.

6. Intellectual property

The parts of H₂Oh! that are ours — the WaterScore methodology and weighting, the written explanations, the interface, the design, the name and logo — are owned by H₂Oh! and protected by intellectual-property law. You may not copy or reuse them commercially without permission.

You may freely link to any page, and you may quote or screenshot a report for personal, journalistic, academic, or advocacy purposes with attribution to H₂Oh!.

7. Public records and third-party content

We do not own the underlying data and do not claim to. Records from the EPA are works of the United States Government and are generally in the public domain. State agency records belong to those states and are governed by their terms. Reproducing them here creates no ownership claim by H₂Oh! over them, and nothing in these terms restricts your ability to obtain the same records directly from the source — which we encourage.

What is ours is the arrangement, the scoring method, and the writing. The facts underneath are everybody’s.

Other third-party material appears under its own terms: the U.S. map outline is derived from U.S. Census Bureau TIGER data via the ISC-licensed us-atlas project; typefaces are used under the SIL Open Font License; news headlines are supplied by third-party publishers and remain theirs; standards names such as NSF/ANSI are the marks of their owners and are used descriptively to identify a standard, not to indicate any endorsement or certification of H₂Oh!.

8. Acceptable use

Please do not:

• Scrape, bulk-download, or hammer the service in a way that degrades it for others, or bypass rate limits. If you want the data in bulk, get it from the EPA directly — it is public, and that is better for everyone.
• Use the service to harass, defame, or threaten any utility, agency, employee, or person, or present a WaterScore as an official finding of unsafe water.
• Republish scores in a way that misrepresents what they measure, or strip them of the context that says they describe compliance history rather than water safety.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the service, probe it for vulnerabilities without permission, or interfere with its operation.
• Use the Water Assistant to try to extract system instructions, generate harmful content, or impersonate H₂Oh! or any agency.
• Submit anyone else’s email address to the waitlist.
• Use the service for any unlawful purpose.

Found a security problem? Please tell us before telling anyone else, and we will not pursue you for good-faith research that respects user privacy and does not degrade the service.

9. Links and product mentions

We link to outside sites — agencies, utilities, NSF International, retailers. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, accuracy, or practices.

Where we describe a category of water filter, we are describing a category and the certification standard that applies to it. As of the date at the top of this page, H₂Oh! has no affiliate, referral, commission, sponsorship, or other paid relationship with any retailer or filter manufacturer, and receives nothing if you buy anything. Product links exist because they are useful, not because they pay. If that ever changes, we will disclose it clearly and next to the link, as the FTC’s endorsement rules require — not buried in this paragraph.

A filter mentioned here is not endorsed, certified, or tested by H₂Oh!. Check NSF International’s own certification listings before buying.

10. Disclaimer of warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, H₂OH! DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE INFORMATION IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE, CURRENT, OR ERROR-FREE, THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, OR THAT ANY SCORE, GRADE, OR LABEL REFLECTS THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF WATER AT ANY TAP.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

11. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, H₂OH! AND ANYONE WORKING ON IT WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF, OR RELIANCE ON, THE SERVICE — INCLUDING ANY DECISION ABOUT DRINKING, FILTERING, TESTING, OR PURCHASING, OR ANY ACTION TAKEN OR NOT TAKEN IN RELIANCE ON A SCORE, LABEL, WARNING, OR THE ABSENCE OF A WARNING.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$100).

Some states do not allow these limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

[REQUIRES REVIEW BY QUALIFIED COUNSEL] — the enforceability of this clause, and of the warranty disclaimer above, varies by state and has not been reviewed by a lawyer.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless H₂Oh! from any claim arising out of your misuse of the service, your breach of these terms, or your violation of anyone’s rights.

13. Reporting an error

If you believe something on H₂Oh! misstates your water system — whether you are a resident, a utility, or an agency — tell us and we will investigate promptly and correct or remove it if we are wrong. We would much rather be corrected than be wrong in public. Utilities in particular: we will publish a correction alongside any disputed figure while we verify it against the source record.

Contact: [INFORMATION NEEDED FROM FOUNDER — corrections address]

14. Changes and termination

We may update these terms. The date at the top will change, and continuing to use the service after that means you accept the update. We may suspend access for anyone who breaches the acceptable-use section.

15. Governing law

[INFORMATION NEEDED FROM FOUNDER — state of formation / principal place of business], and [REQUIRES REVIEW BY QUALIFIED COUNSEL]. We have deliberately not filled in a governing-law state, an exclusive-venue clause, an arbitration agreement, or a class-action waiver. Those choices have real consequences, some of them are unenforceable in certain states, and inserting a plausible-looking one would be worse than leaving it blank.

16. Contact

[INFORMATION NEEDED FROM FOUNDER — legal entity name, mailing address, and contact email]. Until then, the contact link on the home page reaches us.