Texas City, Texas
What is the Water Quality in Texas City, Texas?
Compared to other US cities, Texas City water quality ranks in the high range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 34 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Arsenic is at extremely high levels: 925x health guidelines.
- Chloroform is at very high levels: 4.3x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Texas City water.
What’s in Texas City water?
Here are the top 5 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
- Dibromochloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are seven of the 34 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
16 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Texas City have Lead contamination?
Yes, Texas City water has lead in it. Lead samples collected in Texas City in 2019 had concentrations up to 32.0 parts per billion.
This is dangerously high: The legal limit is 15 parts per billion.
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 for all of the contaminants you can filter out and how to do it.
Where does Texas City’s water come from?
Texas City water comes from the Dickinson Bayou watershed.
Fourteen of the 53 waterbodies in the Dickinson Bayou watershed are in Good condition.
The remaining 39 water sources are in Impaired or Unknown condition.
This includes, but isn’t limited to:
- Bensons Bayou – Impaired
- Bordens Gully – Impaired
- Cedar Creek – Impaired
- Dickinson Bayou Above Tidal – Impaired
- Geisler Bayou – Impaired
- Gum Bayou – Impaired
- Highland Bayou – Impaired
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. See below for what you can do to improve Texas City’s water.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway here
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Texas City, Texas 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 78.6% of contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Texas City water.
- Brita can filter 21 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 31 of the 34 contaminants, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your house.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but may require fewer filter changes over time.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Arsenic
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Molybdenum
- Nitrate
- Radium
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: http://www.texas-city-tx.org/ to find contact information for your local officials.