Sugar Land, Texas

Water Quality in Sugar Land, Texas

Watershed: Upper Oyster Creek

What is the water quality like in Sugar Land, TX?

Let’s dive deeper into Sugar Land water quality.

What’s in Sugar Land water?

Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:

1. Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
2. Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
3. Haloacetic acids – Potential effect: Cancer
4. Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
5. Radium – Potential effect: Cancer

These are five of the 33 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).

16 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.

See the What Can You Do? section below for all of the contaminants you can filter out and how to do it.

Where does Sugar Land’s water come from?

Sugar Land’s water comes from the Upper Oyster Creek watershed.

5 of the 8 EPA assessed water sources in the Upper Oyster Creek watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:

• Flewellen Creek
• Red Gully – 2 segments
• Upper Oyster Creek – 2 segments

Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. Alkire Lake, and Brooks Lake are in Good condition.

Whether a water source is in Impaired or Good condition refers to the quality of these uses:

1. Drinking Water
2. Aquatic Life
3. Fish and Shellfish Consumption
4. Recreation

Learn more from How’s My Waterway

See below for what you can do to improve Sugar Land’s water.

Conclusion – What Can You Do?

Information about Sugar Land water quality can be surprising.

But there’s no reason to lose hope. There are things you can do in your household as well as things you can do at a community level.

In Your Household:

• Use Berkey filters with activated carbon to filter out 26 of the 33 contaminants in your drinking water.
  • Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Sugar Land water.
  • Brita can filter 18 contaminants (and Lead depending on the filter).
  • Note: We may receive a commission if you decide to purchase filters through links on this page.
• To filter out 30 of the 33 contaminants, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your house.
  • These are more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but can be more effective.
  • They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
    • Arsenic – health risks
    • Atrazine
    • Barium – health risks in water
    • Bromochloroacetic acid
    • Bromodichloromethane – health risks in drinking water
    • Bromoform
    • Chlorite
    • Chloroform – side effects
    • Cyanide – exposure limits
    • Dibromoacetic acid
    • Dibromochloromethane
    • Dichloroacetic acid
    • Ethylbenzene
    • Fluoride
    • Haloacetic acids – chlorination byproduct*
    • Hexavalent chromium – health effects
    • Molybdenum
    • Monochloroacetic acid
    • Nitrate
    • Nitrite
    • Radium
    • Selenium – health risks
    • Simazine – herbicide (banned in European Union states)
    • Strontium
    • Toluene
    • Total trihalomethanes – byproduct of chlorination*
    • Trichloroacetic acid
    • Uranium
    • Xylenes

*Chlorination is an effective method of disinfecting/treating drinking water. You can then use a water filter to reduce the effects of chlorination byproducts to get the safest, cleanest water possible.

In Your Community:

Contact your local government officials and put pressure on them to invest in cleaner waterways and upgraded city water filtration and treatment.

Go to: https://www.sugarlandtx.gov/ to find contact information for your local officials.

Water Quality in Other Texas Cities

Texas Water Quality Page