Aliso Viejo, California
What is the Water Quality in Aliso Viejo, California?
[Updated: June 9, 2023]
Compared to other US cities, Aliso Viejo water quality ranks in the middle range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 17 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Chloroform is at particularly high levels: 22x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Aliso Viejo water.
What’s in Aliso Viejo water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Bromodichloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 17 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
11 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Aliso Viejo have Lead contamination?
Yes, Aliso Viejo has lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2016 through 2018 showed concentrations up to 2.3 parts per billion.
The legal limit for lead is 15 parts per billion. Being well-below this level is a good thing.
Concentrations between 3.8 ppb and 15 ppb put a formula-fed baby at risk of elevated blood lead levels. Read more about the symptoms of Lead in water.
There is no safe level of lead for humans.
The good news is that 99.99% of the lead can be filtered out.
See the What Can You Do? section below for all of the contaminants you can filter out and how to do it.
Where does Aliso Viejo’s water come from?
Aliso Viejo’s water comes from the Aliso Creek watershed.
All four (4) waterbodies in the Aliso Creek watershed are in Impaired condition. These include:
- Aliso Creek
- Aliso Creek (mouth)
- English Canyon
- Wood Canyon
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. See below for what you can do to improve Aliso Viejo’s water.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway here
Conclusion – What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Aliso Viejo can be surprising.
But there are things you can do in your home to clean up your water.
To Remove Lead and Other Contaminants In Your Home:
- Use Activated Carbon filters to remove most contaminants in your drinking water.
- To filter out even more contaminants, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your home.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but may require fewer filter changes over time.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Bromoform
- Chloroform
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5)
- Haloacetic acids (HAA9)
- Molybdenum
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs)
- Our recommendation: APEC Reverse Osmosis Systems
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.avcity.org/ to find contact information for your local officials.