Newberg, OR — 2025 Annual Water Quality Report
Every water quality report has to carry the same regulatory freight: testing results, maximum contaminant levels, likely contaminant sources, the required definitions. Newberg’s 2025 report includes all of it. The difference is what the City did with the rest of the document.
The brief
- Report every regulated result accurately, tables and terminology included.
- Be navigable by a resident with no water-system background.
- Reach Spanish-speaking residents with more than a translated summary.
- Put the report in front of people — not just on a webpage.
What we did
The report opens with the numbers residents care about, at poster size: 864.09 million gallons produced in 2025 with zero water-quality deficiencies or violations, plus 40.60 million gallons of nonpotable water supplied for irrigation to conserve the City’s drinking-water source. A system illustration traces that water from the wellfield south of the Willamette River through treatment to the tap, so the data tables that follow have a picture to hang on.
The tables themselves are paired with definitions and plain-language notes on where each substance comes from — no resident is left alone with an acronym. And the City’s 2024 Service Line Inventory Project gets the prominence it earned: 7,635 service connections reviewed through records and physical inspection, confirming no lead service lines anywhere in the system.
From there the report goes well past what the rules require: backflow testing, watershed and stormwater protection, utility billing help, and a “Think Before You Flush” page that turns wastewater education into simple household guidance. An emergency-preparedness spread explains the system’s redundancy — two lines from the wellfield, reservoirs in separate locations, backup power, 14 portable water purification systems, five filtration supply pods — and pairs it with a visual checklist residents can use at home. Each page ends with something to do, not just something to know.
En español — the whole report
The Spanish edition is not a summary sheet. It’s the complete 13-page report — water quality data, the lead service line milestone, emergency preparedness, all of it — typeset and delivered alongside the English version.
Getting it into hands
A companion direct-mail postcard gives residents the short path in: a QR code and short URL to the report online, plus phone and email for anyone who wants a printed copy. A note in Spanish points Spanish-speaking residents straight to their edition, and the reverse side reinforces the City’s “A cleaner community = A safer community” campaign with the number for reporting illegal dumping.
Why it works
One visual system — consistent typography, color, icons, and short content blocks — ties drinking water data, sewer education, billing help, and emergency planning into a single document that still reads unmistakably as the City of Newberg. The regulatory requirements are all met. The report just doesn’t stop there.