West Sacramento, California
What is the Water Quality in West Sacramento, California?
Compared to other US cities, West Sacramento 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: 70x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in West Sacramento water.
What’s in West Sacramento 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) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – 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 West Sacramento have Lead contamination?
Yes, West Sacramento has lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2014 through 2016 showed concentrations up to 1.5 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 West Sacramento’s water come from?
West Sacramento’s water comes from the Toe Drain – Cache Slough watershed.
7 of the 9 water sources in the Toe Drain – Cache Slough watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:
- Delta Waterways
- Duck Slough
- Putah Creek (Solano Lake to Putah Creek Sinks)
- Tule Canal
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. Cache Slough and Shag Slough are in good condition.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve West Sacramento’s water.
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in West Sacramento 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 90% of contaminants in your drinking water. (Berkey Light and Travel Berkey are the only types available in California per state laws.)
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in West Sacramento water.
- Brita can filter 8 of the 19 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 19 contaminants in your whole house, consider a whole house water filtration system.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but can be more effective.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Aluminum
- Bromodichloromethane
- Chloroform
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Fluoride
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5)
- Strontium
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.cityofwestsacramento.org/government to find contact information for your local officials.