Santee, California
What is the Water Quality in Santee, California?
Compared to other US cities, Santee water quality ranks in the high range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 20 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Chloroform is at very high levels: 15x health guidelines.
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) are at very high levels: 46x health guidelines.
- Haloacetic acids (HAA9) are at extremely high levels: 189x health guidelines.
- HAA5 and HAA9 are byproducts of chlorine treatment, a common method of disinfecting water supplies.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Santee water.
What’s in Santee water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Bromodichloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5 and HAA9) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 20 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
12 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Santee have Lead contamination?
No, Santee does not currently have lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2014 through 2016 showed concentrations of 0.0 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 Santee’s water come from?
Santee’s water comes from the Los Coches Creek – San Diego River watershed.
All 5 water sources in the Los Coches Creek – San Diego River watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:
- Eucalyptus Hills Creek
- Los Coches Creek
- San Diego River
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve Santee’s water.
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Santee 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 86% 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 Santee water.
- Brita can filter 14 of 20 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 17 of the 20 contaminants in your whole house, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your home.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but are much more effective.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Bromodichloromethane
- Bromoform
- Chloroform
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5)
- Haloacetic acids (HAA9)
- Molybdenum
- Monobromoacetic acid
- Monochloroacetic acid
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs)
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.cityofsanteeca.gov/ to find contact information for your local officials.