Clearwater, Florida
Water Quality in Clearwater, Florida
Watershed: Clearwater Harbor
What is the water quality like in Clearwater, FL?
Let’s dive deeper into what’s in Clearwater water.
What’s in Clearwater water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Radium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 21 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
These 5 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 Clearwater’s water come from?
Clearwater’s water comes from the Clearwater Harbor watershed.
12 of the 13 EPA assessed water sources in the Clearwater Harbor watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:
- Church Creek
- Clearwater Harbor (North and South)
- Direct Runoff to Intracoastal Waterway
- Lake Seminole Outlet
- Mckay Creek – two segments
- Rattlesnake Creek
- Stevenson Creek – two segments
- The Narrows
- Walsingham Reservoir
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. Taylor Lake is in Good condition.
Whether a water source is in Impaired or Good condition refers to the quality of these uses:
- Drinking Water
- Aquatic Life
- Fish and Shellfish Consumption
- Recreation
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve Clearwater’s water.
Conclusion – What Can You Do?
Information about 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 18 of the 21 contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Clearwater water.
- Brita can filter 5 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 18 of the 21 contaminants in your whole house, 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:
- Aluminum
- Arsenic – health risks
- Barium – health risks in water
- Chromium (total)
- Dalapon – herbicide used on sugarcane and sugar beets.
- Fluoride
- Haloacetic acids – chlorination byproduct*
- Hexavalent chromium – health effects
- Molybdenum
- Monochlorobenzene (chlorobenzene)
- Nitrate
- Radium
- Selenium – health risks
- Silver
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethanes – byproduct of chlorination*
- Uranium
*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: http://myclearwater.com/government/ to find contact information for your local officials.