Drinking water quality report — Indian River County, Florida

The IRCDUS drinking water report covers customers of Indian River County's own utility, which reaches a major portion of the county including the City of Sebastian, but not Vero Beach or Fellsmere utility customers or homes on private wells.

The 2025 report says the county provides water, wastewater and reuse services to a major portion of its population, including the City of Sebastian, while the remaining residents are served by private wells and septic tanks, the City of Vero Beach Utilities or the City of Fellsmere Utilities (IRCDUS 2025 report, page 2). A tap on either city utility is therefore outside this report. The 2024 edition gave essentially the same service-area statement, also naming the City of Sebastian (IRCDUS 2024 report, page 2).

Federal records describe the same system by its ID, FL3314052. EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System lists it as Indian River County Utilities (2 WTPs), a community water system drawing groundwater, with a population served of 126,893 and 52,872 service connections, administered from 1801 27th St in Vero Beach (EPA water system record). Its active treatment plants appear in the EPA facility list as North Hobart RO and South County R.O. (EPA facility records); neither the report nor EPA says which plant supplies a given Sebastian or Gifford street.

The 2025 report rests on monitoring from January 1 to December 31, 2025, except where a table names an older sample year. Its source water section adds that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection assessed the IRCDUS wells in 2023 and identified 11 potential sources of contamination, all with a low probability of causing contamination (IRCDUS 2025 report, page 2).

The 2025 IRCDUS report lists no maximum contaminant level violation for any substance detected in the water serving Sebastian and the unincorporated county, with disinfection by-products the closest to their limits.

Every row above comes from the test results page of the 2025 report, which shows only substances that were detected (IRCDUS 2025 report, page 5). Trihalomethanes, which the report lists as a by-product of drinking water disinfection, were reported at a level of 63.95 ppb against a limit of 80. A footnote names two IRCDUS sampling sites where single results topped 80 ppb in 2025: 5920 Old Dixie Highway in May (81.4 ppb) and August (84.6 ppb), and 13180 Highway A1A in August (81.3 ppb). The report states the system did not incur an MCL violation because all annual average results at all sites were at or below the MCL.

The year before was lower on both by-products. The 2024 report gave haloacetic acids at 6.2 ppb with a range of 2.3 to 7.7 and trihalomethanes at 55.1 ppb with a range of 23.2 to 59.3 (IRCDUS 2024 report, page 4). For the federal Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, the 2025 report lists lithium and PFAS as not detected in 2024 sampling of the Indian River County system.

IRCDUS sent its triennial lead and copper tap sampling results to the state late in 2025, a paperwork deadline miss for the Indian River County system rather than a finding of high lead.

The report states that on December 1, 2025, a review identified potential noncompliance with Florida Administrative Code Rule 62-550 because the facility failed to submit analytical results for triennial lead and copper tap sampling; the report was due by October 10, 2025 and was not received by the department until October 29 (IRCDUS 2025 report, page 4). The same report's results table shows no lead or copper action level exceedance and 0 sampling sites over the action level.

The utility lists its fixes. Staff revised the sampling workflow so sampling begins at the start of each monitoring period, added a follow-up protocol that moves on from nonresponsive customers to alternates, and will finish all lead and copper tap sampling no later than 45 days before the end of each monitoring period. The sampling happens at customer homes in Sebastian and the unincorporated county, so the plan turns on how quickly those households respond.

EPA's federal violation file for FL3314052 carries its highest-numbered entry, violation 20250030276, in the monitoring and reporting category, marked not health-based, with a return-to-compliance date of 2025-12-03 (EPA violation records). The same file lists a monitoring entry for January 2025, also not health-based, returned to compliance on 2025-08-05. Neither record names a lead result.

The IRCDUS report prints its 2025 lead result as 0.0003 ppb, while EPA's database records 0.0003 mg/L for the Indian River County system, so the same digits appear under two different units.

EPA's lead and copper file lists five 90th percentile lead values for the system: 0.0015, 0.0011, 0.0029, 0.0015 and 0.0003, each with a unit of mg/L (EPA lead and copper sample results). The IRCDUS 2024 report gave lead from its 2022 sampling as 1.5 ppb, with copper at 0.13 ppm (IRCDUS 2024 report, page 5).

The 2025 report's own definitions explain the conversion: ppb means micrograms per liter and ppm means milligrams per liter (IRCDUS 2025 report, page 5). Since 1 mg/L equals 1,000 micrograms per liter, EPA's 0.0003 mg/L works out to 0.0003 times 1,000, or 0.3 ppb, and its 0.0015 mg/L entry equals the 1.5 ppb printed in the 2024 report. Read either way, the 2025 IRCDUS figure sits well below the 15 ppb action level the report lists for Sebastian and county customers.

Indian River County posts every IRCDUS annual drinking water quality report from 2000 through 2025 in a document center on its utilities website, and staff answer questions by phone.

The Water Quality Reports page lists 28 documents, from the 2025 Annual Drinking Water Quality Report back to the 2000 edition, plus an Indian River County Utilities drinking water stability flyer (Indian River County water quality reports). That archive lets a Sebastian or Vero Lake Estates customer compare any year's results with the 2025 table above.

Questions about the report go to the Water Plant Superintendent for IRCDUS at (772) 226-3416, the same number listed for copies of the FDEP source water assessment (IRCDUS 2025 report, page 2). For lead, the 2025 report gives (772) 770-5300 for testing requests and says complete lead tap sampling data are available at that number (IRCDUS 2025 report, page 4, and footnote 2 on page 5). The utility also posts a lead service line page on indianriver.gov with an interactive map that shows the service line material recorded for an address.

Private wells sit outside all of this. A home in Roseland or the Sebastian Highlands that draws from its own well is not sampled for the IRCDUS report, since the report names private wells and septic tanks, alongside the two city utilities, as the alternative for residents the county does not serve.

Last verified: October 12, 2026, against the IRCDUS 2025 and 2024 reports, the county website and EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System.