What's in Burke, VA tap water?
Burke is on the Fairfax Water system, drawing from the Occoquan Reservoir and the Potomac. PFAS and hexavalent chromium are both detected above EWG's health guidelines here, and neither is removed by a standard carbon pitcher filter.
Fairfax Water quality report, explained
What Fairfax Water's own test results show for Burke, compared with EWG's health guidelines. Every result here is within EPA legal limits.
Served by
Fairfax Water
Potomac River + Occoquan Reservoir
14
over guideline
Zip codes covered: 22015 and surrounding Burkeareas. “× over” compares the detected level to EWG's health guideline, not the federal legal limit.
Measured by the EPA · Burke, VA
Burke, VA tap water is fully legal.
It is also 82× the health standard for PFOA.
Fairfax County Water Authority runs Burke's water, drawing from surface water and supplying about 1,121,613 people through 281,686 service connections. A system that size runs a long distribution network, and water spends days in it between the plant and the tap.
River water has to be disinfected hard enough to stay safe across the whole network, and this system uses chloramines rather than free chlorine. Chloramine is more stable in long pipe runs and produces fewer trihalomethanes — but it is more corrosive to old plumbing, which is precisely how lead gets into water that left the plant clean.
Every federal limit that applies here is met. Those limits weigh what removal costs. EWG says its health standards are “based only on protecting health and does not consider technical feasibility or the cost of water treatment”. Here is how far apart the two are.
Harm to the immune system; harm to fetal growth and child development; increased cholesterol · EPA limit 4 ppt (set 2024, enforceable from 2029)— also above this
Cardiovascular harm; harm to fetal growth · EPA limit 4 ppt (set 2024, enforceable from 2029)— also above this
Harm to the brain and nervous system · EPA limit 10 ppb (action level, lowered from 15 ppb, in force November 2027)
Harm to fetal growth and child development · no federal limit exists
Harm to fetal growth and child development · no federal limit exists
Harm to fetal growth and child development · no federal limit exists
Hormone disruption; harm to fetal growth and child development · no federal limit exists
Harm to fetal growth and child development · no federal limit exists
PFOA and PFOS were measured above the federal limits too. Compliance is judged on a running annual average rather than a single sample, so this is not a violation — but it is the number EPA itself set as the line.
The EPA's latest round found 8 PFAS compounds in this supply. Lead sampling put the ninetieth percentile at 1.2 ppb — meaning nine in ten homes tested below that, and one in ten above it. It has no violations on file.
Fairfax County Water Authority, on the EPA's record
- Source
- surface water
- Connections served
- 281,686
- People served
- 1,121,613
How this water is treated before it reaches you
Treatment makes water safe to distribute. It is not designed to remove PFAS, and chlorine-based disinfection creates byproducts of its own.
Levels: EPA Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR5, 2023–2025) for PFAS, and the Lead and Copper Rule 90th-percentile result for lead and copper — the highest reported for Fairfax County Water Authority. Health standards: EWG's published drinking water standards, updated February 2025. Levels vary by sampling point and date, and being above a health standard is not a legal violation.
Particular to Burke
Burke is ringed by six dams, and not one of them holds your drinking water
In 1969 Fairfax County and the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District agreed to dam a tributary of Pohick Creek in Burke. It was meant to be the first of eight, built with the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service under the Pohick Creek Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Project. Six were finished between 1970 and 1985 — Woodglen, Royal, Braddock, Barton, Huntsman and Mercer — and the remaining two never were. They were built to hold back storm water and stop the creek eating its banks, not to supply anybody. Several have since been rebuilt to modern dam-safety standards, four of those jobs completed together in May 2015; the Lake Barton work alone was justified on protecting something like $157 million of property downstream.
Burke's water drains away from Burke's water supply
The Pohick Creek watershed covers about 36.5 square miles and runs southeast to the Potomac through Gunston Cove. Fairfax Water draws from the Potomac far upstream of there and from the Occoquan Reservoir, neither of which Pohick Creek feeds — so the creeks and lakes around Burke are not a source of Burke's drinking water at all. What they do show is how much material this ground sheds: the lakes work partly by trapping sediment, and they fill up, needing dredging roughly every seven to ten years to keep doing their job. That is the same runoff a treatment plant has to deal with wherever it does draw from, and it is the reason the contaminants that dominate this region's water are the ones formed by treating river water heavily enough to make it safe.
The fix for Burke water
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Reverse osmosis under your sink, for the 14 contaminants over EWG guidelines in water from Fairfax Water.
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Common in U.S. tap water
Burke water quality FAQ
Is Burke, VA tap water safe to drink?
Water from Fairfax Water meets all federal EPA legal limits. However, independent EWG testing finds 14 contaminants above its stricter health-based guidelines, including haloacetic acids (HAA9) and total trihalomethanes (TTHMs). Legal compliance and health-optimal water are not the same thing.
What contaminants are in Burke water?
The most notable contaminants above EWG health guidelines are haloacetic acids (HAA9), total trihalomethanes (TTHMs), haloacetic acids (HAA5), bromodichloromethane and 10 more. These are largely disinfection byproducts and trace metals common to the region's water sources.
Does a reverse osmosis system remove these contaminants?
Yes. A reverse osmosis system like the Sanavia Hydra uses a 0.0001-micron membrane plus multi-stage carbon filtration to reduce every contaminant class detected in Burke water, at your tap, regardless of what the utility does upstream.
The contaminants flagged in Burke water
Plain-English guides to what Fairfax Watertesting turns up above EWG's health guidelines — what each one is, and what actually removes it.
Reverse osmosis in Burke, VA
Fairfax Water treats this water to the federal standard, yet the contaminants listed above still exceed EWG’s stricter health guidelines — Haloacetic acids (HAA9), Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs), Haloacetic acids (HAA5) and 11 more. Most of them either pass straight through treatment or form after the plant, in the pipes between it and the tap, which is why the fix has to be at the tap as well.
PFAS is the reason a carbon pitcher is not enough here. The compounds do not break down, they are measured in parts per trillion, and the federal limit that covers them is not enforceable until 2029. A reverse osmosis membrane is one of the few things at household scale that reduces them rather than passing them through.
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