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Your 2026 CCR is due July 1. Here is the 6-week plan.

The Consumer Confidence Report deadline is non-negotiable. Here's the week-by-week operator plan to be done well before July 1 — and the specific deliverables each week should produce.

1water.ai editorialApril 18, 2026CCR · deadline · operations

The clock

Your 2026 Consumer Confidence Report is due July 1, 2026, covering calendar year 2025. The deadline is federally set under 40 CFR § 141.152; your primacy agency does not have discretion to waive it without a formal extension request.

As of this writing, you have about ten weeks. That's a comfortable buffer if you start today, a tight one if you start in June, and a visible violation on your system record if you miss it entirely.

The 6-week plan

Here is a plan that works for a one-operator small system. Mid systems will want to parallelize across more than one person; the underlying sequence is the same.

Week 1 — Gather the source material

Collect everything the draft will reference. This is the single biggest time investment and the one that typically gets deferred too late.

  • Last year's CCR. Your 2025 CCR (covering 2024 data) in whatever format you have it — PDF, Word doc, print.
  • 2025 monthly lab reports. Every routine sample for regulated contaminants, including the disinfection byproduct results and the Total Coliform / E. coli reports if applicable.
  • 2025 Lead and Copper sampling if you were in a sampling year, or the current compliance period data if you weren't.
  • SDWIS violation history — pull your system's record from your primacy agency's portal. You need this to correctly disclose any 2025 violations.
  • Service line inventory status — an LCRI requirement since 2024. Whether your inventory is complete, in progress, or scheduled.

Week 2 — Draft the detected-contaminant table

This is the hardest quantitative work. Every contaminant regulated under 40 CFR 141 that was detected in 2025 must appear in the table with MCL, MCLG (or Action Level), level detected, range, sample date, likely source, and violation flag.

The most common error is unit inconsistency — ppb reported where mg/L is required, or vice versa. Pick one unit per contaminant per Appendix A and stick to it.

If you're using 1water.ai, this step is automated: upload the lab PDFs, confirm the extraction, and the table builds itself.

Week 3 — Write the Lead and Copper section

Calculate the 90th-percentile lead value per § 141.80(c)(3). Write the required narrative using Appendix A language — not paraphrased. Disclose the service line inventory status and, if applicable, lead service line replacement progress.

Week 4 — Write the violations, sources, and educational sections

  • Disclose any 2025 violations using the health-effects language from Appendix A. Explain the corrective steps taken and current compliance status.
  • Describe your water sources (groundwater, surface water, purchased).
  • Write the educational closing section. Water conservation tips are fine; the required language on immunocompromised populations, infants, and lead minimization is not optional.

Week 5 — Review, compliance check, approvals

Run the draft through every clause in § 141.153, § 141.154, § 141.155, and your state's overlay. A single fail blocks publish. Route the reviewed draft to the licensed operator for sign-off.

Week 6 — Design, distribute, certify

Format the CCR for your chosen distribution channel — web, PDF, mail merge. Distribute per the rule for your system size. Complete the Certificate of Delivery and submit to your primacy agency. Keep everything in your records per § 141.155.

Where most plans fail

Three places:

  1. Not starting Week 1. Operators frequently try to do Week 2 before Week 1 is complete, which means the draft has to be reworked when missing data arrives.
  2. Skipping compliance review and publishing against spec. This is what causes rejections.
  3. Late Certificate of Delivery. The CD is due with the CCR; several primacy agencies treat a late CD as a late filing.

If you're already behind

If you're reading this in late June, here are your options:

  • Ask your primacy agency for an extension. Many grant 30-day extensions for good-faith reasons; fewer grant longer ones.
  • Distribute a partial CCR by July 1 and file a corrected version.
  • File a missed-deadline Good Faith Effort documentation.

And next year, start in April.

Start your draft

If you want the plan automated — lab PDFs ingested, tables populated, compliance checks running — start a free 60-day trial now. The trial is the product: your draft becomes your first published CCR when you upgrade.

More on this topic

Related reading.

units

ppb vs mg/L: the unit pitfall that fails one in five CCRs

Unit conversion errors are the single biggest reason state reviewers kick reports back. Here's why mixing ppb with mg/L happens, what the federal rule actually says, and how to make sure it doesn't fail your CCR.

Lead & Copper

The 90th percentile for Lead and Copper, explained (with worked examples).

40 CFR § 141.80(c)(3) is ruthless about how the 90th-percentile value is calculated. Here's the walkthrough with real sample sets — and where every tool we tested gets it wrong.

agent-native

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'Agent-native' gets thrown around like a marketing term. Here's the architectural reality — orchestrator plus atomic tools, provenance-per-value, tool parity between UI and API — and why it matters for compliance work.

Your 2026 CCR is due July 1

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