# Consolidation candidate screening

URL: https://municorn.us/build/consolidation-candidate-screening/
Updated: 2026-09-12
Tags: build, screening, consolidation

> **Cite as:** Municorn.us, "Consolidation candidate screening", https://municorn.us/build/consolidation-candidate-screening/ (updated 2026-09-12).
> **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — reuse and redistribution are permitted with attribution to Municorn.us and a link to this URL.

Which systems in a program are small, are struggling to keep filing, or are reporting figures that rest on the regulator's own default values, and which of them sit in the same county as a larger system that is not.

## What it is

A screen over a state's own published filings for the systems a consolidation or capacity program exists to find: the small ones, the ones that have stopped filing or file erratically, the ones whose reported figures rest largely on the default values the form supplies instead of on a measurement, and the ones that sit in the same county as a materially larger system that shows none of those signals.

All of it is in the record already, and none of it arrives as a list anyone can work down.

Part of it is now on this site, free, for the five states whose service area boundaries we hold: which systems border which, and what the published figures say across each border. [Indiana](/consolidation/indiana-water-systems/), [Massachusetts](/consolidation/massachusetts-water-systems/), [Texas](/consolidation/texas-water-systems/), [California](/consolidation/california-water-systems/) and [Georgia](/consolidation/georgia-water-systems/) each have one. Those pages are the adjacency half and the published-figure half. What they do not have is your filing history, your defaulted components, or the reasons a system was refused.

## What you hand us

Nothing. Every input is a file your agency has already published, and the screen names the file and the retrieval date for every row.

## What you get back

One row per system: its size as most recently filed, its filing history against the annual requirement, the share of its most recent figure that was measured rather than defaulted, a stability flag, and whether a materially larger system in the same county shows none of those signals.

Every system that could not be screened is listed as refused, with the reason: the identifier was malformed, two systems shared one identifier, or the filing was absent.

## What it is built from

Your published filings, archived as published, and nothing that is not public.

## What it does not do

**It does not say a consolidation should happen.** It says which systems match the pattern a program is looking for. Whether combining two systems is feasible, lawful or wanted is a study, and the boards involved have to want it.

It does not draw a service area. Where EPA's published boundary layer covers a state, adjacency is computed from it and each border says whether EPA got both shapes from a government or modelled them; where no boundary exists, adjacency is stated at county level, which is coarse and is labeled as coarse. Neither is a claim that two systems share a pipe.

It does not value a system and it does not price a transaction.

It does not mark a system as failing. We hold a published threshold for one of these states and none for the rest, so a system here is small, or lapsed, or reporting defaults. It is never "over" anything.

It does not rank. A ranked list invites somebody to work down it, and the order would be ours and not the program's.

_Municorn.us · https://municorn.us/build/consolidation-candidate-screening/ · CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ · updated 2026-09-12_

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