Lakewood, Colorado

What is the Water Quality in Lakewood, Colorado?

[Updated: June 12, 2023]

Compared to other US cities, Lakewood water quality ranks in the high range for contamination excluding Lead.

Most of their 34 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.

• Arsenic is at high levels: 6.7x health guidelines.
• Chloroform is at very high levels: 30x health guidelines.
• Haloacetic acids (HAA5) are at extremely high levels: 142x health guidelines.
• Haloacetic acids (HAA9) are at extremely high levels: 246x health guidelines.
  • These are both byproducts of the chlorine treatment process most water supplies go through.

Let’s look closer at what’s in Lakewood water.

What’s in Lakewood water?

Here are the top 6 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:

1. Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
2. Bromodichloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
3. Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
4. Haloacetic acids – Potential effect: Cancer
5. Radium – Potential effect: Cancer
6. Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer

These are six of the 34 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).

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

Does Lakewood water have Lead contamination?

Lakewood utilities has not provided current lead test results to state or federal agencies. – EWG

We recommend testing at home for lead contamination.

• Test Your Water using Varify Home Test Kits or similar.

Here is some additional information about lead concentrations for reference:

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 removed.

See the What Can You Do? section below to learn how to filter out contaminants.

Where does Lakewood’s water come from?

Lakewood’s water comes from the 101900020904 watershed.

15 of the 19 EPA assessed water sources in the 101900020904 watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:

• Aqua Golf
• Barnum Lake
• Bear Creek
• Garfield Lake
• Harvey Lake
• Houston Lake
• Overland Lake
• Sloan’s Lake
• Smith Lake
• South Platte River – mainstem and all tributaries
• Vanderbilt Lake

Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. Bowles Lake, Grasmere Lake, Lakewood Gulch, and Lee Gulch are all 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 Lakewood’s water.

Conclusion – What Can You Do?

Information about water quality can be surprising.

But there are things you can do in your home to clean up your water.

1. Test Your Water using Varify Home Test Kits or similar.
2. To Remove Lead and Other Contaminants In Your Home:

• Use Activated Carbon filters to remove most contaminants in your drinking water.
  • Faucet-mount filters work better than pitchers.
  • PUR and Brita are low-cost and effective.

• To filter out even more 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:
    • Androstenedione
    • Antimony
    • Arsenic – health risks
    • Barium – health risks in water
    • Beryllium
    • Bromodichloromethane – health risks in drinking water
    • Bromoform
    • Chloroform – side effects
    • Chromium (total)
    • Dibromoacetic acid
    • Dibromochloromethane
    • Dichloroacetic acid
    • Fluoride
    • Haloacetic acids – chlorination byproduct*
    • Hexavalent chromium – health effects
    • Molybdenum
    • Monobromoacetic acid
    • Monochloroacetic acid
    • Nitrate
    • Nitrite
    • Radium
    • Selenium – health risks
    • Strontium
    • Thallium
    • Total trihalomethanes – byproduct of chlorination*
    • Trichloroacetic acid
    • Uranium
  • Our recommendation: APEC Reverse Osmosis Systems

*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.lakewood.org/Government to find contact information for your local officials.

Water Quality in Other Colorado Cities

Colorado Water Quality Page