Chesterfield County Water
What Chesterfield County’s 2025 Water Quality Report says about the water reaching your home, and what you can change once it gets there.
Chesterfield reports that the water it delivered in 2025 complied with all state and federal primary drinking-water regulations. We don’t sell filtration because the water is unsafe. We help homeowners change what they’d rather not have at every tap and in the glass.
Where your water comes from
Chesterfield draws on three water sources. In 2025 the county delivered an average of 40.4 million gallons a day from:
- Swift Creek Reservoir, treated at the county’s own Addison-Evans plant (about 8.4 million gallons a day)
- Lake Chesdin, through the Appomattox River Water Authority (about 23.2 million gallons a day)
- The James River, treated at the City of Richmond’s plant (about 8.8 million gallons a day)
Which source reaches your home depends on where you live, so some figures below are listed by source.
Chloramine in Chesterfield water
Chesterfield uses chloramine, a disinfectant made from chlorine and ammonia, to keep water protected as it travels through the pipes. The county checks total chlorine 180 times a month across its system, and its 2025 running annual average was 2.34 ppm, under EPA’s 4.0 ppm limit.
Individual readings ranged from 0.1 to 4.2 ppm. That isn’t a violation: EPA’s limit applies to the running average, and the county notes that individual readings are allowed to go above 4 ppm.
Chloramine is doing its job when it reaches your house. It’s also what can give tap and shower water a chlorine or pool-like smell and taste, and it’s harder for ordinary carbon to reduce than chlorine.
2025 figures
As published in the Chesterfield County 2025 Water Quality Report.
| Chloramines | 2.34 ppm running annual average (EPA limit 4.0). Individual readings ranged 0.1–4.2 ppm. |
|---|---|
| TTHMs | 30.0, 36.7 and 36.0 ppb for the Lake Chesdin, Swift Creek and James River sources (EPA limit 80). |
| HAA5 | 22.0, 25.3 and 31.0 ppb by source (EPA limit 60). |
| Chlorite | 0.39 ppm from the Lake Chesdin source, another disinfection byproduct (EPA limit 1.0). |
| PFAS (“forever chemicals”) | Swift Creek source: PFOA 2.1, PFBS 2.3, PFBA 4.9, PFHxA 2.0 and PFPeA 2.1 ppt. Lake Chesdin source: PFBS 2.2 and PFBA 3.7 ppt. James River source: none detected. EPA’s PFOA limit is 4.0 ppt. |
| Lead | Not detected at the 90th percentile; 0 of 50 homes above the action level. The county reports no lead service lines in its inventory. |
| Copper | 0.111 ppm at the 90th percentile; 0 of 50 homes above the 1.3 ppm action level. |
| Sodium | 9.3–19.4 ppm by source. |
| Fluoride | 0.93 and 0.94 ppm highest readings for the Lake Chesdin and Swift Creek sources (EPA limit 4.0). The James River source’s highest reading was 3.86 ppm, which the county’s report attributes to a malfunction at the City of Richmond’s treatment plant. That’s above EPA’s non-enforceable 2.0 ppm secondary standard and below the 4.0 limit. |
| Nitrate | 0.22–0.25 ppm (EPA limit 10). |
| Not listed in the 2025 report | Hardness, pH, total dissolved solids, alkalinity, chloride, manganese and E. coli, all of which Richmond’s 2025 report includes. Utility reports generally list what was detected or required that year, so an item not listed may not have been detected or tested. |
Source Chesterfield County 2025 Water Quality ReportEPA, Chloramines in Drinking Water
What this means for your home
If you’d like less chlorine smell and taste at every faucet, shower and bath, whole-home catalytic carbon at your main water line is designed to reduce chloramine before water reaches any tap.
For drinking water, optional reverse osmosis adds a separate, dedicated faucet beside your kitchen faucet. Chesterfield found low levels of several PFAS (“forever chemicals”) at two of its three sources, and EPA research shows reverse osmosis reduces PFAS.
Read the research EPA treatment technologies
See the system and pricingDo Chesterfield homes need a softener?
Chesterfield’s 2025 report doesn’t list hardness, so there’s no county figure to point to. We don’t add a softener to every system. If you’re seeing scale or spotting you’d like to reduce, tell us and we’ll talk it through.
Read the softener guideReady to learn what makes sense for your home?
Tell us a little about your home and we’ll help you determine the right next step.