ROCKFORD

Rockford’s official system description identifies groundwater, not the Rock River, as its supply. It describes 30 wells at 26 locations, ranging from less than 200 feet to more than 1,500 feet deep, together with 28 reservoirs and two elevated tanks. The webpage does not give an inventory effective date, so these figures are a published description, not a newly verified operating count.

Treatment is distributed among well sites rather than performed at one central plant. The city lists fluoride, polyphosphates and chlorine. Treated water moves from storage into distribution through booster pumps. The description says filtration plants were designed to remove iron, manganese and radium; it places the first plants online in 2008 and discusses a total of ten at the conclusion of the improvement project in 2012. That historical account is not a claim about today’s active plant count.

The same undated page separately reports annual production of 7.6 billion gallons, average consumption of approximately 16.7 million gallons per day, and capacity of up to 40.0 million gallons per day. Production, consumption and capacity are different measures; their periods are not supplied and no trend or reconciliation is inferred.

Illinois Drinking Water Watch independently identifies ROCKFORD as IL2010300, an active community groundwater system principally serving Winnebago County. Its September 17, 2026 record lists residential population served of 147,051 and 51,060 residential service connections, without a measurement year. These are system measures, not city population or current household counts. The state source list contains 25 active wells, while the undated utility overview says 30; the June 2026 monitoring notice also describes 25. The sources are retained separately rather than silently reconciled.

Historical source descriptions distinguish shallow sand-and-gravel groundwater from deeper bedrock. The 2006 brochure describes eight sand-and-gravel wells beneath the Rock River valley, typically 200–250 feet deep, and 31 sandstone wells up to 1,500 feet deep. The 2012 report again identifies shallow sand-and-gravel and deep-bedrock aquifers. These are dated descriptions, not today’s operating counts; drawing groundwater beneath the valley is different from taking surface water from the river.

A treatment diagram in the 2007 archive entry (cover dated 2008) shows a horizontal pressure-filter vessel, media and gravel, an underdrain, phosphorus-based corrosion control, fluoride and chlorine addition, hydrous manganese oxide for radium removal, and booster pumps. It documents the historical process design rather than proving that every well uses the same equipment today.

Confirm service for a specific address with Utility Billing. The official map gallery’s lead-service inventory, watershed, capital-project and flushing maps answer different questions; none is presented here as a legally verified water-service boundary. Illinois’s public system page has an empty water-purchases table, which does not establish that emergency interconnections or wholesale arrangements are absent.

Rockford’s 2025 report describes review of the Well Site Survey and Illinois Rural Water Association recharge-area survey. City staff recorded potential sources, routes or problem sites within 200- or 400-foot minimum setback zones and 1,000-foot maximum setback zones; IRWA recorded sites in regulated recharge areas. Only wells with associated sites are listed.

Illinois EPA’s susceptibility determination considers well and entry-point monitoring, available hydrogeologic data and recharge-area land use. The source’s distances and counts below are retained as written. Do not sum overlapping zones or interpret an omitted zone as zero. The report does not provide survey dates; listed abandoned wells show why this is historical assessment context rather than an operating-well inventory.

For the full assessment, the report directs customers to City Hall or Water Quality at 779-348-7151. The utility’s Water Quality page describes participation in the Northern Regional Groundwater Protection Planning Committee and supplies household and garden protection guides. Those resources address groundwater protection, not service-area boundaries.

Inside the home

Official groundwater-protection guide
Read the home protection guide

Yard and garden

Official groundwater-protection guide
Read the garden protection guide

The municipally owned Water Division describes responsibility for production, quality control, treatment, distribution and related services for approximately 55,000 water customers. The undated customer count is not a population-served estimate.

Administration handles fiscal control, system planning and service contracts. Distribution maintains and replaces mains, service branches, valves and hydrants. Field Services handles customer concerns, meter readings, meter installation and service calls. Production oversees wells and booster pumps, storage, treatment, water quality, cross-connection control and facility maintenance.

Water-quality concerns, report questions and sampling

779-348-7151 · [email protected]
Call Water Quality

General Water Division service questions

779-348-7300
Call the Water Division

Jamie Rott, P.E. · Water Superintendent

779-348-7654 · [email protected]
Email the superintendent

The city’s lead-service map distinguishes public and private portions. The 2025 report describes the property owner’s line to the cutoff box at the property line and the city-owned portion from that box to the main. It says lead services were predominantly installed before 1960; building age alone does not establish a line’s material. The report names Matt Moorman, 779-348-7374, for a copy of the inventory. The September 17, 2026 map query below uses the same exclusion of fire-service records as the published web map. It counts service records, not people or distinct properties; the map supplies no inventory effective date. The retrieval date is not a material-verification date.

The utility says construction of its financed Lead Service Line Replacement Project has commenced. That undated statement does not supply an annual replacement count or completion date. The project uses the Public Water Supply Loan Program State Revolving Fund, administered by Illinois EPA with some US EPA funding. Separately, eligible owners agreeing to pay for replacement on private property can coordinate replacement of the city portion at the same time. Field Services handles voluntary replacement questions at 779-348-7152.

Water Quality offers free annual lead testing with kits delivered to customer households. Request a kit at 779-348-7151 and follow the supplied collection instructions. The 2025 report lists a lead 90th percentile of 14 ppb, eight sites above the action level, and a printed range from no detects to 130 ppb; copper is 0.62 ppm at the 90th percentile, with one site above the action level and a separately printed range of no detects to 1,400 ppb. These system sampling statistics do not predict a particular home’s result.

The city describes naturally hard groundwater and food-grade polyphosphate corrosion control. Treatment and system-level statistics do not establish a household result. Its undated webpage describes a three-year reduced monitoring schedule, but newer Illinois records show annual periods in 2023–2024 and half-year periods in 2025–2026. The state record therefore supersedes that webpage’s schedule description for the periods actually reported. The latest listed period, January–June 2026, contains 100 samples per analyte and measures of 0.51 mg/l copper and 0.01 mg/l lead. These summary measures are not individual tap results.

The 2025 report advises flushing plumbing for several minutes before drinking after water has been sitting, and using a filter certified by an ANSI-accredited certifier to reduce lead when a filter is used. Follow the filter manufacturer’s replacement instructions and the utility’s sampling instructions; flushing is not a substitute for identifying and removing lead sources. The report also reminds customers to remove and clean faucet aerators every three months. Ask Water Quality at 779-348-7151 about testing and address-specific guidance.

Public and private service-line material

Select the water-drop marker for your property; review both portions.
Open Rockford’s service-line map

Submit your material information

The city provides a digital material-identification survey.
Open the city’s material survey

Voluntary full service-line replacement

779-348-7152 · Field Services
Discuss eligibility and private-property costs

An exact PWSID match in EPA’s July 2026 final UCMR 5 release returns 1,320 records for ROCKFORD, IL, with 44 results for each of 30 analytes. There are 23 facility/sample-point pairs. The collection dates range from October 9, 2023 to October 15, 2025; the monitoring cycle is 2023–2025. This dataset is broader than the annual report’s detection-only PFAS table.

EPA marks 1,317 records with a less-than sign and an empty numerical result. Three records have numerical values and a blank sign: PFHxS at TP 5 (Well 6), 0.0061 µg/L on October 10, 2023 and 0.0066 µg/L on April 10, 2024, both with an MRL of 0.003 µg/L; and PFPeA at TP 24 (Well 26), 0.0044 µg/L on April 10, 2024 with an MRL of 0.003 µg/L. These are distinct samples, not a system average.

Minimum reporting levels describe the program’s reporting capability and are not health-based limits. “Below MRL” does not mean zero. UCMR 5 results do not by themselves indicate compliance or noncompliance with drinking-water standards. The pages make no inference about current advisories, individual exposure or treatment performance.

Expand a named facility below. Every source field is retained either in the dated result table or its shared-field note: groundwater/entry-point codes, associated-field blanks, monitoring requirement and federal/state codes remain source literals. “Blank in source” distinguishes an empty cell from a measured zero. Names such as “TP 1 (Well 45)” are EPA’s sampling labels, not a verified current facility inventory.