Just moved to Prescott? Start here on water

Here is the whole thing in the order it is useful.

1. Work out which you are on

If you get a monthly water bill from the City of Prescott, the Town of Prescott Valley or the Town of Chino Valley, you are on a public system. If there is a wellhead, a pressure tank and no water bill, you are your own utility.

There is no in-between, and the difference is regulatory rather than technical. Public systems are tested on a schedule and must publish the results. ADEQ does “not regulate the water quality of private wells,” and the University of Arizona's AZ1486f finishes the thought: “No one else will test your water for you.”

Groundwater is 78 percent of this county's water supply either way, per the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center's Yavapai County factsheet, which also estimates over 13,000 exempt wells in the Prescott Active Management Area alone.

2. If you are on city water, read the report

Every public system publishes an annual water quality report. Yours is already written. The relevant numbers as of the most recent published reports:

	Prescott (RY2024)	Prescott Valley (2025)	Chino Valley (2024)
Hardness	75–130 mg/L (4.3–7.6 gpg)	123 ppm (114–139)	Not reported
Arsenic (MCL 10 ppb)	1.8–8.0 ppb	5.7–7.1 ppb	7.7 ppb high
Nitrate (MCL 10 ppm)	2.03 ppm	2.2 ppm	1.7–2.46 ppm
Fluoride	0.29 ppm	0.32 ppm	0.31 ppm
Sodium	14 ppm	33 ppm	15 ppm
Lead, 90th percentile	<5.0 ppb	Non-detect	Non-detect

Sources: Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley.

Short version: moderately hard, arsenic well under the limit, nothing alarming. Prescott draws from seven production wells in the Little Chino Sub-Basin of the Prescott Active Management Area.

What that report cannot tell you

It stops at the main. Lead and copper come from your own plumbing, not the aquifer — EPA notes lead enters water “when plumbing materials that contain lead corrode.” If your house is older, a tap sample is the only thing that speaks to your house.

3. If you are on a well, do these three things

Look up the well's own record

The Arizona Department of Water Resources keeps a registry of every registered well, including the driller's log, depth and casing. Start at ADWR's Well Record Search or the Wells55 map. Wells are registered to the parcel they sit on, so a parcel number gets you there. Knowing your well is 380 feet deep rather than 90 changes how you read everything else.

Test it

EPA and CDC both say to test annually for total coliform bacteria, nitrates, total dissolved solids and pH. AZ1486f adds testing “before buying or selling a home with a private well,” which for a new owner means now, because you inherited a system with no record. In this county add arsenic to that first panel — Arizona Cooperative Extension's AZ1503 records the highest arsenic concentration ever found in Arizona groundwater near Paulden, at 2,900 ppb in a private domestic well.

Use a laboratory that Arizona licenses. The list is published by the Arizona Department of Health Services. Arizona State University has also run free private well sampling in the county in partnership with Yavapai County Development Services — worth checking whether it is still open.

Do not buy anything yet

Equipment sized before a test is equipment sized to a guess. AZ1486f recommends testing both before and after installing any treatment system, so that the thing you bought can be shown to have worked.

4. Find the shutoff before you need it

Houses here are slab-on-grade. There is no basement valve. City of Phoenix describes the usual Arizona arrangement: “for most houses, this valve is usually located at the front of the home, near a hose bib. Look for a pipe coming out of the ground and going into the house.” Scottsdale notes the owner's cut-off is often adjacent to the meter box.

Find it this week and turn it. A valve nobody has moved in fifteen years sometimes does not move at 2am either.

Do not plan on using the meter itself. Phoenix warns that shutting off at the meter “requires a special tool and you may be held responsible for any repairs to a damaged water meter.”

5. Run the meter test once, for a baseline

On city water this takes twenty minutes and tells you whether the house you just bought is already leaking. City of Prescott's method: turn off everything that uses water including the evaporative cooler, softener and icemaker, record the meter reading, wait twenty minutes, read again. “If gallons used is greater than zero, you have a leak.” Past the meter, the city notes, the repair is the property owner's.

6. Note the water heater's age

The date is usually encoded in the serial number on the data plate. Published lifespans run 8 to 12 years for a tank. If you inherited a ten-year-old unit, you have not got a problem yet, but you have got a budget line. Replacing one in the City of Prescott requires a building permit, so it is licensed work.

Common questions

Is Prescott tap water safe to drink?

The City of Prescott's most recent water quality report shows arsenic at 1.8 to 8.0 ppb against an EPA limit of 10 ppb, nitrate at 2.03 ppm against a limit of 10, and lead at the 90th percentile below 5.0 ppb with none of 30 sample sites above the action level. It is a regulated, tested and reported supply. The report describes conditions at the source and in the distribution system, not inside your own plumbing, which is where lead and copper originate.

Do I need to test my water if I just bought a house in Prescott?

If you are on a private well, yes, immediately. Arizona Cooperative Extension lists testing before buying or selling a home with a private well as a specific trigger, and ADEQ does not regulate private well water quality, so no record exists unless the previous owner made one. Test for total coliform bacteria, nitrate, total dissolved solids and pH as EPA and CDC recommend, and add arsenic in this county. If you are on city water, the annual report already covers the source.

How do I find out how deep my well is?

The Arizona Department of Water Resources maintains a public well registry containing driller's logs, well depth, casing details and registration numbers. Wells are registered to the parcel where they are physically located, so a parcel number will find the record. Search through ADWR's Well Record Search page or the Wells55 map.