Community Water System Survey 2000 (Rourke and

Agency 2002b) in the United States. While the vast majority of water and sewer customers are served by large metropolitan systems, most systems are small and located in rural areas. Due to their small size, these rural systems are generally more expensive to build and operate on a per-user basis, and they tend to have more problems complying with environmental and public health requirements. Many of these systems need special help to serve their customers reliably over the long term. Within the last few years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) commissioned two studies of community water systems. One was th