Fountain Valley, California
What is the Water Quality in Fountain Valley, California?
Compared to other US cities, Fountain Valley water quality ranks in the middle range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 24 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Uranium is at high levels: 7.5x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Fountain Valley water.
What’s in Fountain Valley water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- 1,4-Dioxane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
- Uranium – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 24 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
15 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Fountain Valley have Lead contamination?
No, Fountain Valley does not currently have lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2016 through 2018 showed concentrations of 0.0 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 to learn how to filter out contaminants.
Where does Fountain Valley’s water come from?
Fountain Valley’s water comes from the Greenville Banning Channel – Santa Ana River watershed.
1 of the 4 water sources in the Greenville Banning Channel – Santa Ana River watershed is in Impaired or Unknown condition. This is Newport Slough.
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. Newport Beach, Santa Ana Delhi Channel, and Santa Ana River (Reach 1) are all in good condition.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve Fountain Valley’s water.
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Fountain Valley 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:
There is one solution that beats Brita, PUR, and expensive whole house systems.
- It costs less per gallon.
- Needs fewer filter changes.
- And it doesn’t make your water taste weird.
- Use Berkey filters with activated carbon to filter out at least 75% of contaminants in your drinking water. (Berkey Light and Travel Berkey are the only types available in California.)
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of any Lead in Fountain Valley water.
- Brita can filter 11 of 24 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 21 of the 24 contaminants in your whole house, consider a reverse osmosis water filtration system for your house.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but can be much more effective.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- 1,4-Dioxane
- Bromoform
- Chloroform
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Fluoride
- Germanium
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5 and HAA9) – common byproducts of chlorine water treatment.
- Nitrate
- Nitrite
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethane – common byproduct of chlorine water treatment.
- Uranium
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.fountainvalley.org/ to find contact information for your local officials.