Stow buys Akron's water and prints the same hardness

Stow prints the number, and Akron makes the water

Stow doesn’t make its own water. Its 2025 report says the city buys it from Akron. It’s surface water from the Upper Cuyahoga River, taken by way of three reservoirs: Wendell R. LaDue and East Branch in Geauga County, and Lake Rockwell in Franklin Township, Portage County. Akron treats it at the Lake Rockwell plant and pumps it to Stow along North River Road.

Stow takes it in at the Marsh Road and North Main Street (Munroe Falls) booster pump stations. From there it runs through more than 160 miles of main to over 13,500 service taps, for over 35,000 residents. The report describes no softening step of Stow’s own.

Stow’s report prints the hardness all the same. The average is 107 mg/L, or 6 grains per gallon. The range is 76 – 150 mg/L, or 4 - 9 grains per gallon.

Two reports, one table

We don’t read those numbers as a second measurement. The hardness table comes after the section headed “Results from Akron”, under a heading of its own. The report says some of its results are supplied by Akron, but not which ones. Akron’s own 2025 report prints the same hardness, line for line.

That means you can check one document against the other. We did. Alkalinity, pH and both hardness lines match to the digit, and so does every other line but one.

One line doesn’t. Akron prints its manganese range as 0.003 - 0.030 mg/L. Stow’s table prints 0.003 – 0.30 mg/L. By our arithmetic that’s a tenfold difference at the top of the range, and both print the same average, 0.013 mg/L. Akron’s table of all its 2025 tests, on the same reports page, also puts the top at 0.030. Our reading, and only ours, is that a zero went missing when the table was copied. Neither city has said so. We raise it for one reason: if anyone shows you Stow’s manganese line to sell you a manganese filter, read Akron’s line first.

What Stow’s own results cover

The results Stow’s report lists under its own name are about its pipes. That’s the part Akron’s plant can’t see.

Its service line inventory lists no lead lines, no galvanized lines needing replacement, and no lines whose lead status is unknown. The city says it used historical records and visual inspections to reach that. In the lead and copper round the report lists, sampled in 2024, zero of 30 samples went over the action level. Its lead result was 0.

Stow also samples for bacteria forty times a month. Every 2025 sample was negative for coliform.

Then the byproducts. These form when water is disinfected, and Stow tests for them in its own system. Its 2025 HAA5 level was 55.4 ug/L against a limit of 60, with no violation. Single samples ran as high as 90.7. The report explains that this isn’t a violation, because single samples are averaged with others before they are compared with the limit.

Akron’s own report records an HAA5 violation at two of its twelve monitoring sites in 2025, which our page on Akron’s byproducts covers. Stow’s report, on its own sites, shows no violation. We are not treating the two as a contest.

If what bothers you is the taste of disinfected water, that is a carbon question, not a softener question.

The pipe to Cuyahoga Falls

Stow also has an emergency connection with Cuyahoga Falls. In 2025 it drew 0 gallons through it. The report says it doesn’t cover the quality of the water that would come from Cuyahoga Falls.

That matters, because Cuyahoga Falls is a different supply. Its own report says it uses well water from a well field in Water Works Park, and it softens part of that at its own plant. It prints a different hardness range too, which our Cuyahoga Falls page walks through. Two towns that share a border are on different water. A softener setting from a house in Cuyahoga Falls doesn’t carry over to a house in Stow.

With nothing drawn through that connection in 2025, Akron’s water is the only supply the report says Stow used. So Akron’s hardness figures are the ones that apply.

What we would do in Stow

Start from the published number, because in Stow there’s one.

The average, 107 mg/L, sits in the band the USGS calls moderately hard, 61 to 120 mg/L. The top of the range, 150, reaches into the next band up, which the USGS calls hard. So hardness in Stow is real, and it’s modest.

A softener is sized in grains per gallon, and Stow’s report hands you that unit. At 4 to 9 grains, a home softener for a Stow house is usually smaller than one quoted from a chart, and some homes need none. The sizing reasoning is the same as on our Akron hardness page, because it’s the same water.

Then test at your own tap. The report gives a system average, and your house is one address at the end of a long run of main. The free water test gives you your own number. If it says you don’t need a softener, we’ll tell you so.

For the rest of what we do nearby, see water testing and softeners across Summit County.