Little Elm, Texas
What is the Water Quality in Little Elm, Texas?
Compared to other US cities, Little Elm water quality ranks in the very high range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 39 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Arsenic is at extremely high levels: 37x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Little Elm water.
What’s in Little Elm water?
Here are the top 7 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
- Atrazine – Potential effect: Harm to the developing fetus
- Bromodichloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Radium – Potential effect: Cancer
These are seven of the 39 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
19 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Little Elm have Lead contamination?
Yes, Little Elm has lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected in 2019 showed concentrations up to 2.7 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 Little Elm’s water come from?
Little Elm’s water comes from the Cottonwood Branch – Little Elm Reservoir.
The water sources in the Cottonwood Branch – Little Elm Reservoir watershed are in Good condition. These include:
- Lewisville Lake – multiple sections
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition with no or low contamination.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve Little Elm’s water.
Conclusion – What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Little Elm can be surprising and downright scary.
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 81.3% of contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Little Elm water.
- Brita can filter 20 of the 39 contaminants and Lead depending on the filter.
- Regular Brita filters will not remove Arsenic, Cyanide, or Radium.
- Note: We may receive a commission if you decide to purchase filters through links on this page.
- To filter out 36 of the 39 contaminants, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your house.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but are much more effective.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Arsenic
- Atrazine
- Chlorite
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Cyanide
- Fluoride
- Haloacetic acids
- Nitrate
- Nitrite
- Radium
- Selenium
- Silver
- Simazine
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethanes
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.littleelm.org/27/Government to find contact information for your local officials.