Hudson water hardness depends on whose water you get

Start with whose water it is

Hudson’s water doesn’t come from one utility. It comes from four.

The city’s own water page lists them by area. Hudson’s water department serves the central area of the city. Akron serves the south, east and north. Cleveland serves the northwest and north. Stow serves the south.

Read that list twice and you’ll see the areas overlap. North appears under Akron and under Cleveland. South appears under Akron and under Stow. So a compass point won’t settle it. Your street will.

That’s why we won’t answer the question “how hard is Hudson water.” There is no single Hudson water to answer it about. The honest first question is which utility supplies your house. That decides whose numbers apply to you.

If you aren’t sure which one you’re on, your water bill is the place to start.

Hudson’s own wells, and what the report leaves out

Hudson’s own water comes from five underground wells. The city’s water page says they serve approximately 2,300 customers. The city’s treatment page says approximately 3,500. We can’t tell you which count is current.

The 2025 report puts the wellfield in the western portion of town. It draws on a sand-and-gravel aquifer with a significant clay layer between it and the ground surface. The department distributed 386 million gallons in 2025. It treats the water with disinfection, fluoridation, softening and filtration.

Softening is on that list. A hardness figure isn’t. We read the whole 2025 report, and it doesn’t print one anywhere, before treatment or after.

The city’s website does. A page called Behind the Scenes of Water Treatment says 80% of the water is sent to the zeolite softeners. It puts the hardness of the water coming into the plant at approximately 500 milligrams per liter. Once it goes through the softeners, the page says, the reading drops to nearly 130.

Read those numbers for what they are. The page carries no date. The figures are approximate. They aren’t in the annual report. And the page doesn’t say whether nearly 130 is the softened share alone, or all the water once it is mixed back together.

If that figure still holds, it sits just inside the range the USGS calls hard, 121 to 180 mg/L. That’s a reason to measure. It isn’t a number to size a softener from.

Kent also softens its own well water, and its annual report prints the hardness going in and coming out. We cover that on our Portage County page. Hudson’s annual report prints neither.

The August violation

Hudson’s 2025 report also records an E. coli violation, in August 2025. A routine sample at one location tested positive for total coliform, and a repeat sample there tested positive for E. coli. City staff investigated the service line and the piping inside that property, and flushed them. The three repeat samples the rules then required all came back clear of both. The report notes that the location isn’t one of its regular sampling sites.

We mention it because we said we read the whole report. It’s a record of one site in one month, and the city’s own follow-up samples were clean. It isn’t a reason to buy equipment, and we won’t use it as one.

The report lists one more violation, a paperwork one. A fluoride result from 2022 was left out of the table in the 2024 report, and it has since been recorded.

The Cleveland side of town

Parts of the northwest and north of Hudson are on Cleveland Water, which draws from Lake Erie. Cleveland’s 2025 report prints hardness, as calcium carbonate, at 105-130, with an average of 117. The table’s own note says its results are in ppm.

Hudson’s own report defines a ppm as a milligram per liter, so the two units read the same. The USGS calls 61 to 120 mg/L moderately hard and 121 to 180 hard. So Cleveland’s average sits just inside moderately hard, and the top of its range crosses into hard.

The Akron and Stow side

Parts of the south, east and north are on Akron. Stow’s own report says Stow buys its water from Akron. Put those together, and the part of south Hudson on Stow’s pipes gets Akron water too.

For all of those streets the number is Akron’s. Akron’s 2025 report prints an average of 107 mg/L across a range of 76 - 150 mg/L. It prints the same thing as 6 grains per gallon, across 4 - 9 grains per gallon. Stow’s report reprints the same figures. Our Akron hardness page covers what they mean for a softener.

Put the Cleveland and Akron numbers side by side and one thing stands out. Cleveland’s average is higher. Akron’s range is much wider. Two houses in Hudson can be on supplies with similar averages and very different spreads.

The systems are tied together in one more way. Akron’s report lists Hudson’s water utility among the connections it can draw partial backup water from in an emergency.

So four suppliers bring three different waters into one city: Hudson’s own wells, Akron’s reservoirs on the Upper Cuyahoga River, and Cleveland’s Lake Erie. Only the first has no hardness figure in its annual report.

What we would do in Hudson

Find out which utility serves you. It decides everything else on this page.

If you’re on Cleveland or Akron water, you have a published number. It covers a whole system, and yours is one address on it. A test at your tap tells you where you sit. If you want a home softener, size it from that real grain figure rather than from the town’s name.

If you’re on Hudson’s own water, the only number is the city’s approximate, undated one, and it isn’t in the annual report. Here, measuring comes before anything else. The free water test does that at your tap. If the number says you need nothing, we’ll say so.

People call us about more than hardness. All three supplies are disinfected, and each report records it. If what bothers you is taste or smell rather than scale, that is a carbon question, not a softener question.

For the rest of our work nearby, see water testing and softeners in Summit County.