The primary objective of the project was to characterize raw water, treatment plant, distribution, and household tap water quality with respect to microbes, water quality indictors, and physicochemical parameters in Davenport, Iowa. The goal was to provide a context for interpreting the public health data generated by the epidemiology study. In response to the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act requirements, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) formulated a series of epidemiology studies to determine the occurrence of waterborne disease in the United States. The Iowa-American Water Company, Davenport district, was selected because it best satisfied all of the study criteria. Detailed analyses were conducted on raw, treated plant effluent, distribution system, and household tap and treatment device water samples. The findings of the separately funded epidemiology study will have a tremendous impact on the perception and regulation of drinking water. This study demonstrated that the water supply studied met or surpassed all measures of water quality. The outcome of the epidemiology study (whether waterborne disease is observed or not) will either support current standards of drinking water quality, or radically change the approach to ensuring potable water. Originally published by AwwaRF for its subscribers in 2003.