By OpenStats · Built from official Canadian sources
Direct municipal dataWater quality grade
Excellent
Graded against Health Canada drinking water guidelines
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Municipal reports cover the plant. A Tap Score kit tests the water at a Thunder Bay tap for a broader contaminant panel.
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Thunder Bay water hardness is 45.8 mg/L with pH 8.
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 Thunder Bay 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
Bare Point Water Treatment Plant
City-owned plant on Lakeshore Drive / Bare Point. ZeeWeed membrane ultrafiltration and sodium hypochlorite disinfection. Operational capacity 113.5 million litres per day. Main intake roughly 730 m offshore at about 10 m depth; gravity feed into the plant.
Single-source system delivering through eight pressure zones, seven pump stations, four reservoirs, and one standpipe across the city. Bare Point has been the sole municipal residential supply since major 2007 upgrades.
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
Ontario · 123 cities in sample
Provincial average: hardness 178 mg/L · pH 7.5 · lead 0.4 μg/L · fluoride 0.6 mg/L
| Parameter | Reading | Health Canada guideline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardness | 46 mg/L | No health limit (aesthetic) | Compliant |
| pH | 8 | 6.5–8.5 | Compliant |
| Lead | 0.5 μg/L | ≤ 5 μg/L | Compliant |
| Fluoride | 0.02 mg/L | ≤ 1.5 mg/L | Compliant |
| Chlorine (free) | 1.43 mg/L | ≤ 4 mg/L | Compliant |
| Turbidity | 0.038 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
Thunder Bay pairs 46 mg/L hardness with 1.4 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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