Quality of Drinking Water in Large Cities Ranked

If the quality of your municipal drinking water is important to you, move to Arlington, Texas. The Environmental Working Group has rated its water the best among large cities in the U.S.

On the other hand, if you'd rather live in the Northeast because you love its winters, despair not. Providence, R.I., came in 2nd.

The Environmental Working Group rated the water utilities of cities with populations of 250,000 or more on three factors:

...the total number of chemicals detected since 2004; the percentage of chemicals found of those tested; and the highest average level for an individual pollutant, relative to legal limits or national average amounts, including for the most common pollutants (disinfection byproducts, nitrate and arsenic). [From the Group's website.]

The top 10 cities were:

1. Arlington, TX
2. Providence, RI
3. Fort Worth, TX
4. Charleston, SC
5. Boston, MA
6. Honolulu, HI
7. Austin, TX
8. Fairfax County, VA
9. St. Louis, MO
10. Minneapolis, MN

And the bottom 10 were:

91. Jacksonville, FL
92. San Diego, CA
93. North Las Vegas, NV
94. Omaha, NE
95. Houston, TX
96. Reno, NV
97. Riverside County, CA
98. Las Vegas, NV
99. Riverside, CA
100. Pensacola, FL

Connecticut residents: the highest-ranked utility in our state was Bridgeport-based Aquarion, at No. 21. Hartford's Metropolitan District Commission ranked 23rd, and New Haven stood 37th.

See the entire list of cities here.