Tap water · OR

Portland Water Bureau

EPA system ID OR4100657 · serves about 666,200 people. Every US utility must publish an annual water quality report — here’s the official one (2025), and below it, our plain-English translation.

Read the official report →

What Portland Water Bureau found in 2025

6 detected analytes from the utility’s own annual report, hand-normalized — nothing was near or over a federal health-based limit.

DetectedLevelLimit% of limitStatus
Lead (90th percentile)4.9 ppb15 ppb33%Within limit
Copper (90th percentile)0.15 ppm1.3 ppm12%Within limit
Radon194 pCi/LNo federal limit
Manganese23.9 ppbNo federal limit
Sodium11.75 ppmNo federal limit
Fecal coliform bacteria (% more than 20 CFU per 100 milliliters [mL] in 6 months)0.6 %No federal limit

Levels and limits are as printed in the utility’s report (“limit” is the EPA MCL, action level, residual limit, or secondary guideline that applies to that row; “ND” = not detected). Utilities publish these reports annually — we re-check every covered utility each July, after the federal publication deadline. Detected doesn’t mean dangerous — most detections sit far below their limits. This is education, not medical advice.

Your tap, if it were a bottle

How Portland Water Bureau water stacks up against the bottled aisle

Same minerals, same units — the tap values below come from the utility’s report, placed next to the closest match in our bottled-water database.

MineralYour tapClosest bottled match
Sodium11.8 mg/LVolvic at 11.6 mg/L

Tap values are the headline levels from the utility’s annual report (often a highest or average figure); bottled values are label- or report-derived. A closest match is a numeric comparison, not an equivalence or an endorsement.

Zip codes covered

97201 · 97202 · 97203 · 97204 · 97205 · 97206 · 97209 · 97210 · 97211 · 97212 · 97213 · 97214 · 97215 · 97216 · 97217 · 97218 · 97219 · 97220 · 97221 · 97227 · 97232 · 97239 · 97266

Boundary zips partially served by other systems are deliberately unlisted — check your exact zip.