By OpenStats · Built from official Canadian sources
Direct municipal dataWater quality grade
Good
Graded against Health Canada drinking water guidelines
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Medicine Hat water hardness is 200 mg/L, from the city's published water quality reporting.
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
How Medicine Hat 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.
Surface water
Research confidence: high
Medicine Hat Water Treatment Plant
At 1502 Power House Road SW beside the South Saskatchewan River and city power plant site; continuous staffing; plant originally dates to 1912 with successive expansions.
Treated water is pumped into the municipal distribution system from the riverside plant. A residuals management facility at the plant site is being built so process solids are landfilled rather than returned to the river.
All monitored parameters meet Health Canada guidelines.
Health parameters compliant; minor aesthetic factors such as hardness or pH near guideline edges.
Figure 1 · Supply chain
From watershed to tap
Alberta · 51 cities in sample
Provincial average: hardness 178 mg/L · pH 7.5 · lead 0.3 μg/L · fluoride 0.6 mg/L
| Parameter | Reading | Health Canada guideline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardness | 200 mg/L | No health limit (aesthetic) | Compliant |
| pH | 7.9 | 6.5–8.5 | Compliant |
| Lead | 0.6 μg/L | ≤ 5 μg/L | Compliant |
| Fluoride | 0.7 mg/L | ≤ 1.5 mg/L | Compliant |
| Chlorine (free) | 1.1 mg/L | ≤ 4 mg/L | Compliant |
| Turbidity | 0.7 NTU | ≤ 1 NTU (typical target) | Compliant |
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
Medicine Hat pairs 200 mg/L hardness with 1.1 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.
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