Maricopa, Arizona
What is the Water Quality in Maricopa, Arizona?
Compared to other US cities, Maricopa water quality ranks in the lower middle range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 19 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes. Arsenic is at extremely high levels: 1,854x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Maricopa water.
What’s in Maricopa water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic (extreme levels) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Nitrate – Potential effect: Cancer
- Uranium – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 19 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
9 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Maricopa have Lead contamination?
Yes, Maricopa has lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2016 through 2018 showed concentrations up to 1.1 parts per billion (ppb).
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 Maricopa’s water come from?
Maricopa’s water comes from the Casa Grande Valley – Santa Cruz Wash watershed.
There are no known water sources in the Casa Grande Valley – Santa Cruz Wash watershed.
Ideally, a water source would be Known and rated in Good condition.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve Maricopa’s water.
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Maricopa 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 80% of contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Maricopa water.
- Brita can filter 3 contaminants and Lead depending on the filter.
- We don’t recommend using Brita in Maricopa homes.
- Note: We may receive a commission if you decide to purchase filters through links on this page.
- To filter out 16 of the 19 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
- Barium
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Chromium (total)
- Germanium
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5)
- Nitrate
- Nitrite
- Radium
- Selenium
- Strontium
- 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.maricopa-az.gov/home to find contact information for your local officials.