Twice-Yearly CCR Delivery

Systems serving 10,000 or more persons must publish a CCR twice per calendar year starting January 1, 2027. This page covers who triggers the requirement, the two hard deadlines, what the second report must include, how wholesale and consecutive systems divide the work, and how electronic delivery options apply to both cycles.

Who is required to publish twice yearly

The biannual delivery requirement applies to every community water system (CWS) that serves 10,000 or more persons. The threshold is inclusive: a system at exactly 10,000 persons served must comply. The regulation uses the phrase "10,000 or more" — not "more than 10,000" — so there is no gap at that boundary.

Under 40 CFR § 141.155(j)(2), these systems "must distribute the report biannually, or twice per calendar year, by December 31." The requirement was added to the statute by the America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 (AWIA, Pub. L. 115-270 § 2008), which directed EPA to revise the CCR rule. EPA finalized those revisions on May 24, 2024 (89 FR 46013, document ID 2024-10919). The statutory chain runs from SDWA 1996 to AWIA 2018 to the 2024 CCR Rule Revisions.

Full compliance with this requirement begins January 1, 2027, under the phased compliance schedule at 40 CFR § 141.152. The 2027 rule changes page covers the full three-phase compliance timeline.

Systems serving fewer than 10,000 persons are not subject to this requirement. Those systems continue to deliver one annual CCR, due July 1 each year.

The two deadlines: July 1 and December 31

There are two distinct delivery deadlines, and neither is optional for systems at or above the threshold.

First report — July 1. Every community water system, regardless of size, must distribute its annual CCR by July 1 each year. The report covers water quality data collected during the previous calendar year (40 CFR § 141.155(j)(1)). For a CCR due July 1, 2027, that means data from calendar year 2026.

Second report — December 31. Systems serving 10,000 or more persons must distribute a second report by December 31 of the same calendar year (40 CFR § 141.155(j)(2)). The December 31 date is a hard deadline, not a soft target. There is no grace period stated in the regulation.

These two deadlines divide the year into two distinct distribution cycles. Your compliance calendar, printing contracts, and any mailing or electronic delivery workflows all need to account for both.

| Delivery | Deadline | Data covered | |---|---|---| | First report | July 1 | Previous calendar year's monitoring data | | Second report | December 31 | Same year; includes 6-month update if triggered |

What the second report must contain

The December 31 report is not simply a reprint of the July 1 report. The regulation distinguishes between a baseline second delivery and one that must carry a required update.

Baseline second report. When no violations, action level exceedances, or unregulated contaminant monitoring results occurred between January 1 and June 30 of the reporting year, the second report is a delivery of the same annual CCR content distributed in July. The purpose is to reach customers who may not have received or read the first delivery.

Second report with a 6-month update. If any of the following occurred between January 1 and June 30, the December 31 report must include a "6-month update" under 40 CFR § 141.155(j)(3):

• A violation of a primary drinking water standard
• An action level exceedance (e.g., a lead or copper result above the action level)
• Receipt of unregulated contaminant monitoring results that were not included in the July 1 report

The 6-month update must include a short description of what the update covers and why a second delivery is occurring, plus the specific details required for each type of event: violation description, health effects language, and actions the system has taken or is taking to address the issue. The required health effects language for regulated contaminants comes from 40 CFR § 141.153 and § 141.154.

If you had a clean first half with no violations or exceedances, you do not need to generate new content for December — you re-deliver the annual CCR. If you had violations, those must appear in the 6-month update section of the second delivery.

Wholesale and consecutive systems

Wholesale systems — those that sell finished water to another community water system — have a separate but related obligation. A wholesale system meets its own CCR requirement by providing the consecutive (buyer) system with the water quality data that system needs to prepare its own CCR. This is established at 40 CFR § 141.152(d).

The data-delivery deadlines under § 141.152(d):

• April 1 annually — wholesale system delivers applicable information required under § 141.153 to the buyer system (for the July 1 CCR cycle)
• October 1 annually — for consecutive systems that are themselves subject to the biannual delivery requirement, the wholesale system must also provide the applicable information required under § 141.155(j) by October 1, to enable the buyer to prepare the December 31 second report

This means a consecutive system serving 10,000 or more persons needs two data deliveries from its wholesale supplier each year: the standard April 1 data package and an October 1 package covering any mid-year monitoring results. If your consecutive system has not confirmed this arrangement in a contract or written agreement with your wholesale supplier, do that before January 1, 2027.

If you are a wholesale-only system and do not distribute water directly to end-users, the CCR rule generally does not require you to publish a consumer-facing report — your obligation is data delivery to consecutive systems per § 141.152(d). Confirm your specific obligation with your primacy agency, because state programs may impose additional requirements beyond the federal floor.

Electronic delivery for the second report

Electronic delivery options apply equally to both the July 1 and December 31 reports. The 2024 CCR Rule Revisions codified four delivery methods at 40 CFR § 141.155(a):

1. Direct mail or hand delivery of a paper report
2. Mail notification with a direct link to the online report
3. Email with a direct link or an electronic version of the report
4. Any other method approved by your primacy agency

Electronic delivery does not reduce your obligation to provide a paper copy on request. Any customer who requests a paper copy must receive one.

Running two delivery cycles per year roughly doubles the operational workload of delivery itself — printing, mailing, notification systems, and record-keeping. Systems that have not yet moved to electronic delivery should weigh that transition before 2027, specifically because the December 31 deadline falls in a compressed window at year-end when staff capacity is often reduced.

Step-by-step: how to plan a biannual CCR cycle

The following steps apply to systems that will be subject to § 141.155(j)(2) beginning January 1, 2027.

Step 1: Confirm your population served. Determine whether your system meets the 10,000-or-more threshold. Use the population figure your primacy agency has on file for your system. If you are near the threshold, confirm with your primacy agency which figure they use for compliance determinations.

Step 2: Update your compliance calendar. Add both deadlines — July 1 and December 31 — to your annual compliance calendar. Work backward from each deadline to set internal milestones: data compilation, draft review, certification, and delivery logistics.

Step 3: Confirm wholesale data delivery timelines. If your system receives finished water from a wholesale supplier, contact that supplier and confirm the April 1 and October 1 data-delivery commitments. For consecutive systems subject to biannual delivery, get the October 1 arrangement in writing.

Step 4: Decide your delivery method for each cycle. Review the four delivery options under § 141.155(a). If you use electronic delivery, ensure your system can execute delivery twice per year and that your process for handling paper-copy requests scales to two cycles.

Step 5: Set a mid-year monitoring review. After June 30, review your monitoring results for the first half of the year. If any violations, action level exceedances, or unregulated contaminant monitoring results occurred between January 1 and June 30, your December 31 report must include the 6-month update under § 141.155(j)(3). Identify this in July so you have time to draft the required content.

Step 6: Draft and review the second report. If a 6-month update is required, draft it alongside the standard annual CCR content. If no update is required, confirm you have a finalized version of the July 1 report ready for the December 31 re-delivery.

Step 7: Certify delivery within 10 days. The 2024 CCR Rule Revisions tightened the certification deadline. Systems must certify to their primacy agency that they delivered the CCR within 10 days of delivery — down from the prior three-month window. This applies to both the July 1 and December 31 deliveries.

For an overview of all changes taking effect in 2027, see the 2027 rule changes page. For the CCR resource home, which covers who must publish a CCR and what it must contain.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-03. Next scheduled review: every 3 months until Jan 1, 2027 effective date.