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Essex pairs 164 mg/L hardness with 0.9 mg/L chlorine — taste and scale show up together. Elite carbon for drinking, shower filter for chlorine, strips so you know when you need a softener.
Essex tap water: Grade A, hardness 164 mg/L
By OpenStats · Built from official Canadian sources
Regional estimateA
Water quality grade
Excellent
Graded against Health Canada drinking water guidelines
Lead within guidelinepH in range
Hardness vs provincial average164 mg/L · prov. avg 178 mg/L
Lead vs provincial average0.4 μg/L · prov. avg 0.4 μg/L
Hardness
164 mg/L
Lead
0.4 μg/L
≤ 5 μg/L
pH
7.2
6.5–8.5 range
Hardness
164 mg/L
Hard
Lead
0.4 μg/L
Max: 5 μg/L
pH
7.2
6.5–8.5
Chlorine
0.9 mg/L
Max: 4 mg/L
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OpenStats pick for Essex — 0.9 mg/L chlorine taste on 164 mg/L water
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Reading this page
Essex's drinking water earns Grade A (Excellent). Hardness is 164 mg/L (hard), and pH is 7.2 against Health Canada's 6.5–8.5 guideline.
Lead at 0.4 μg/L is below the 5 μg/L maximum, and fluoride is 0.6 mg/L against a guideline of ≤ 1.5 mg/L.
How to use this page: read the headline metric and provincial comparison first, then supply and treatment notes, then the source footer for the underlying dataset.
Watershed to tap
Supply and treatment
How Essex draws, treats, and distributes drinking water, from municipal and utility publications. Chemistry grades above come from separate parameter records; this section does not invent plant lab figures.
Source type
Groundwater
Research confidence: medium
Source waters
- groundwater
Treatment plants
Essex Water Treatment Plant
From municipal open data or regional estimate (verify locally).
All monitored parameters meet Health Canada guidelines.
All health parameters meet Health Canada guidelines with comfortable pH, hardness, and turbidity.
Figure 1 · Supply chain
From watershed to tap
Compared to provincial average
Ontario · 123 cities in sample
Hardness (city vs Ontario avg)164 mg/L
pH (city vs Ontario avg)7.2
Lead (city vs Ontario avg)0.4 μg/L
Fluoride (city vs Ontario avg)0.6 mg/L
Provincial average: hardness 178 mg/L · pH 7.5 · lead 0.4 μg/L · fluoride 0.6 mg/L
Full parameters
| Parameter | Reading | Health Canada guideline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardness | 164 mg/L | No health limit (aesthetic) | Compliant |
| pH | 7.2 | 6.5–8.5 | Compliant |
| Lead | 0.4 μg/L | ≤ 5 μg/L | Compliant |
| Fluoride | 0.6 mg/L | ≤ 1.5 mg/L | Compliant |
| Chlorine (free) | 0.9 mg/L | ≤ 4 mg/L | Compliant |
| Turbidity | 0.5 NTU | ≤ 1 NTU (typical target) | Compliant |
Alberta water licences
WaterRegister.ca
On a private well or holding an Alberta water allocation licence? Water Register maps EPA licence records, transfer comparables, and watershed context across the province.
Explore WaterRegister.ca →OpenStats pick
OpenStats picks for Essex — chlorine + hardness
Essex pairs 164 mg/L hardness with 0.9 mg/L chlorine — taste and scale show up together. Elite carbon for drinking, shower filter for chlorine, strips so you know when you need a softener.
As an Amazon Associate, OpenStats earns from qualifying purchases.
· Compare options- Shop on Amazon.caBrita 10-cup Elite pitcherOpenStats pick for Essex — 0.9 mg/L chlorine taste on 164 mg/L water
- Shop on Amazon.caSR SUN RISE 20-stage shower filterEssex’s 0.9 mg/L chlorine — bestselling shower filter on Amazon.ca
- Shop on Amazon.caFrizzlife SW20 under-sink filterNSF 53 lead reduction for Essex older plumbing
- Shop on Amazon.caBrita Elite replacement filtersSix-month Elite cartridges for Essex
- Shop on Amazon.caVARIFY hardness test strips164 mg/L at Essex — pitchers do not soften; strips decide if you need a softener
Source · ECCC / municipal open data (seed). Last updated 2026-09-01. Refreshed on the site's automated schedule.