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OpenStats picks for Sudbury — moderate hardness
Sudbury at 168 mg/L is hard enough for kettle scale but often below whole-house softener urgency. Carbon filtration for taste plus hardness strips before you overspend.
Sudbury tap water: Grade A, hardness 168 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 average168 mg/L · prov. avg 178 mg/L
Lead vs provincial average0 μg/L · prov. avg 0.4 μg/L
Hardness
168 mg/L
Lead
0 μg/L
≤ 5 μg/L
pH
7.1
6.5–8.5 range
Hardness
168 mg/L
Hard
Lead
0 μg/L
Max: 5 μg/L
pH
7.1
6.5–8.5
Chlorine
0.5 mg/L
Max: 4 mg/L
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Reading this page
Sudbury's drinking water earns Grade A (Excellent). Hardness is 168 mg/L (hard), and pH is 7.1 against Health Canada's 6.5–8.5 guideline.
Lead at 0 μg/L is below the 5 μg/L maximum, and fluoride is 0.5 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 Sudbury 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
Mixed surface and groundwater
Research confidence: high
Source waters
- Wanapitei River
- Ramsey Lake
- Groundwater well fields (Garson and other community systems)
- Vermilion River (purchased Vale supply for one distribution area)
Treatment plants
Wanapitei Water Treatment Plant
Conventional surface-water plant between Coniston and Wahnapitae; source Wanapitei River. Rated capacity 54,000 m³/day; supplies roughly 60% of the Sudbury Drinking Water System.
David Street Water Treatment Plant
Ultrafiltration membrane plant drawing Ramsey Lake via an intake about 300 m offshore. Rated capacity 40,000 m³/day; supplies roughly 40% of the Sudbury DWS (south, west, and downtown). Heritage building with modern membrane process.
Garson Well Field and other community well systems
Groundwater systems (Garson, Blezard Valley–Capreol, Falconbridge, Onaping/Levack, Dowling, etc.) serve outlying communities; one distribution area conveys purchased water from Vale’s Vermilion WTP.
Distribution
Sudbury DWS interconnects Wanapitei, David Street, and Garson supplies through a large trunk/distribution network including the Ellis Reservoir. City materials cite roughly 1,800 km of watermains citywide across multiple systems.
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)168 mg/L
pH (city vs Ontario avg)7.1
Lead (city vs Ontario avg)0 μg/L
Fluoride (city vs Ontario avg)0.5 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 | 168 mg/L | No health limit (aesthetic) | Compliant |
| pH | 7.1 | 6.5–8.5 | Compliant |
| Lead | 0 μg/L | ≤ 5 μg/L | Compliant |
| Fluoride | 0.5 mg/L | ≤ 1.5 mg/L | Compliant |
| Chlorine (free) | 0.5 mg/L | ≤ 4 mg/L | Compliant |
| Turbidity | 0.9 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 Sudbury — moderate hardness
Sudbury at 168 mg/L is hard enough for kettle scale but often below whole-house softener urgency. Carbon filtration for taste plus hardness strips before you overspend.
As an Amazon Associate, OpenStats earns from qualifying purchases.
· Compare options- Shop on Amazon.caBrita Denali pitcherOpenStats pick for Sudbury at 168 mg/L — everyday chlorine taste
- Shop on Amazon.caWaterdrop 15UA under-sink filterSkip the pitcher wait in Sudbury
- Shop on Amazon.caVARIFY hardness test stripsConfirm 168 mg/L before a softener
- Shop on Amazon.caBrita replacement filtersRecurring cartridge supply
Source · ECCC / municipal open data (seed). Last updated 2026-09-01. Refreshed on the site's automated schedule.