League City, Texas
Water Quality in League City, Texas
Watershed: Clear Creek – Frontal Galveston Bay
What is the water quality like in League City, TX?
Let’s dive deeper into what’s in League City water.
What’s in League City water?
Here are the top 6 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
- Bromodichloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are six of the 37 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
13 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 League City’s water come from?
League City’s water comes from the Clear Creek – Frontal Galveston Bay watershed.
42 of the 51 EPA assessed water sources in the Clear Creek – Frontal Galveston Bay watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:
- Armand Bayou – four segments
- Bayport Channel
- Big Island Slough
- Chigger Creek – two segments
- Clear Creek – nine segments
- Clear Lake
- Cow Bayou
- Cowart Creek – two segments
- Horsepen Bayou
- Jarbo Bayou – two segments
- Little Cedar Bayou
- Magnolia Creek
- Mary’s Creek – two segments
- Mud Gully
- Taylor Bayou
- Taylor Lake – three segments
- Turkey Creek
- Upper Galveston Bay – three segments
- Willow Springs Bayou
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. Harris County Flood Control Ditch A, Hickory Slough, Pine Gully, Sylvan Beach Park, and multiple unnamed tributaries.
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 League City’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 30 of the 37 contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in League City water.
- Brita can filter 22 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 33 of the 37 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 – herbicide
- Barium – health risks in water
- Bromacil – herbicide used for brush control. See: Safety
- Bromochloroacetic acid
- Bromodichloromethane – health risks in drinking water
- Bromoform
- Chloroform – side effects
- Chloromethane
- Chromium (total)
- Dibromoacetic acid
- Dibromochloromethane
- Dichloroacetic acid
- Ethylbenzene
- Fluoride
- Haloacetic acids – chlorination byproduct*
- Hexavalent chromium – health effects
- Molybdenum
- Monochloroacetic acid
- Nitrate
- Nitrite
- Phenanthrene – used in dyes, plastics, pesticides, explosives, and drugs.
- Radium
- Simazine – herbicide (banned in European Union states)
- Strontium
- Toluene
- Total trihalomethanes – byproduct of chlorination*
- Trichloroacetic acid
- 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://leaguecity.com/ to find contact information for your local officials.