*Updated February 11, 2022
The graphic below is an illustration of the typical components of a public drinking water system that uses groundwater.
SCDES monitors the City’s drinking water quality in several different ways:
- Compliance sampling required under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
- Oversight sampling to provide additional data
- Investigative sampling as requested
- Special studies
SCDES performs a sanitary survey of the City’s drinking water system on an annual basis.
The purpose of a sanitary survey is to evaluate a public water system's ability to provide a continuous supply of safe drinking water to its customers.
Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR)
The City uses SCDES compliance data to develop their Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) which is required by the Safe Drinking Water Act. The CCR tells where drinking water comes from and lists the regulated contaminants detected in treated water and the level at which they were found for the preceding calendar year. The City of Denmark Public Water System is required to publish notice of its CCR in a local newspaper and make the CCR report available upon request at City Hall.
Water Quality Monitoring
The results for Denmark's compliance and supplemental oversight sampling can be found on SCDES's Drinking Water Watch page.
- The accumulated water quality data for the City through 2018 are summarized in this table.
- The Safe Drinking Water Act violations for the City through 2018 are summarized in this table.
- Iron and Manganese Data for the City from 2007 - January 2019 are summarized in this table.
Special Study: School Water Sampling
DHEC coordinated with the Bamberg District Two school district to conduct water sampling for lead levels as requested at the community meeting which DHEC hosted on April 5, 2018. DHEC staff collected samples at Denmark-Olar Elementary School on April 12, 2018, and Denmark-Olar Middle School on April 19, 2018. All results from both schools were less than the EPA’s lead action level of 0.015 milligrams per liter (mg/L). View the results here: School Sampling Data - April 2018 (PDF).
Special Study: Partnership Well Sampling
In response to concerns expressed by some customers during a DHEC community meeting on April 5, 2018, the Department agreed to work collaboratively with statewide partners to perform a special sampling study of the water quality of the four public wells serving the City.
The University of South Carolina (UofSC) Arnold School of Public Health, USC Department of Chemistry and the Edisto Riverkeeper (with support of the SC Rural Water Association) joined DHEC as partners in the study. Partners collected samples at the same locations and times but used independent laboratories to perform analysis and prepared independent reports for comparison.
This study incorporated independent analysis of samples of untreated (raw) water and treated (disinfected) water collected at the well house of each of the four public wells: Cox Mill, Voorhees, Acacia Street, and West Voorhees. Each sample from each location was analyzed for pH, bacteria, chlorine residual, lead, iron, and manganese.
Findings of the DHEC study were that:
- pH was within EPA guidelines, close to neutral and less likely to be corrosive.
- Lead was not detected in any of the four wells. There were no elevated detection limits.
- Bacteria data and chlorine residuals data indicated that water disinfection was effective.
- Iron and manganese in the raw and treated water were less than the EPA drinking water standards.
All three partners sampled together and had similar results.
All results complied with EPA safe drinking water standards.
Partnership Well Sampling Reports:
Contact Us
Join SCDES's Denmark Water contact list to stay informed. Any citizen who would like to share concerns about water quality and/or request sampling in his/her home is asked to contact our SCDES Regional Office in Orangeburg.
SCDES Orangeburg Regional Office
1550 Carolina Ave.
Orangeburg, SC 29116
(803) 533-5490
This webpage will continue to be updated with new information as it's available.