Kent water hardness, before and after the plant

Two columns, and only one is yours

Elsewhere in the county, Streetsboro’s report prints one hardness figure, for water that has already been softened. Kent prints two, side by side, in the same table of its annual report.

The left column is the raw well water, before any treatment. Its average for 2025 was 304 mg/l. The USGS calls anything over 180 very hard, so that’s very hard water by a wide margin.

The right column is the water at your tap, after the city’s own plant. It averaged 101 mg/l. That sits inside the 61 to 120 band the USGS calls moderately hard.

Only the right column comes out of your faucet. We’re saying that flatly because the left one is printed first, and it’s the bigger number. A softener sized from 304 is sized for water that no home on Kent city water drinks.

Where Kent’s water starts

Kent runs its own system on its own groundwater. The wells sit close to the water plant, in what the city calls the Breakneck Creek Wellfield, and they tap the Buried Valley Aquifer. One well is different. Well No. 13 is a rock well that draws from a water-bearing sandstone.

At the plant the water is softened, filtered, stabilized so it isn’t corrosive, disinfected and fluoridated. That’s the city’s own list, in its own order.

The water in the aquifer sits close to the surface. Ohio EPA’s assessment of the source, as the report sums it up, puts the depth to water in the sand and gravel aquifer at less than 15 feet below the ground. That’s the first of four reasons it rates the source as highly susceptible to contamination. It’s a rating of the ground the water comes from, not of your tap. The city took 360 routine bacteria samples around town in 2025, and every one was negative.

Two smaller things are worth knowing. One new well was drilled and pump tested in 2025, and a second is being drilled in 2026. And Kent has an emergency connection to Ravenna, which it used for 0 gallons all year.

What the plant takes out

Kent doesn’t print the share of hardness it removes, so we did the subtraction. The gap between the two averages is 203 mg/l, about two thirds of the raw 304. That’s our arithmetic, not a figure the city published.

The two minerals that make water hard didn’t fall evenly. Calcium went from 93 mg/l to 20. Magnesium went from 17 to 13. So the plant took out most of the calcium and left most of the magnesium.

The report also prints a line that’s easy to skip: non-carbonate hardness, 83 mg/l raw and 55 at the tap. Take that away from the total and what is left is the carbonate part. It falls from 221 to 46. That’s our arithmetic again.

Scale is mostly what went

The USGS says that when hard water is heated, as in a home water heater, solid deposits of calcium carbonate can form. It says this scale can shorten the life of equipment, raise the cost of heating the water and clog pipes.

Now look at what Kent’s plant cut hardest. Calcium, and the carbonate part of the hardness. Those are the two ingredients of that scale. Of the 203 mg/l gap, 175 is the carbonate part, and that’s our arithmetic too. Compared with what comes out of the ground, most of both is gone before the water leaves the plant.

What reaches you is a different mix from the raw water, not just a smaller amount of it. By our arithmetic, 55 of the 101 mg/l at the tap, more than half, is the non-carbonate kind. Some scale can still form. The report doesn’t say how much, and neither will we. Your water heater, and a test at your own tap, are the honest way to find out.

What that means for a softener here

Kent prints hardness in mg/l only. Divide 101 by the usual 17.1 and you get about 5.9 grains per gallon. That conversion is ours, not the city’s.

At about six grains, a home softener in Kent is usually a smaller unit, and plenty of houses on city water won’t want one at all. We size it from your own test and from how many people live in your house, not from a city average. A softener takes out calcium and magnesium alike, so it would also catch the magnesium the plant leaves in. If what bothers you is soap that won’t rinse off or spots on glasses, that’s a fair reason to want one. If what bothers you is heavy scale, test first, because the plant has already removed most of what makes it.

The number that decides it’s the one at your own tap, and the free water test measures that. For how Kent compares with Streetsboro and the rest of the county, see Portage County water, and for what we do there, see our Portage County page.

These figures are Kent’s. If your water bill comes from someone else, or you are on a private well, they don’t describe your water, and we won’t pretend they do.