Water filter installation in Eastern Pennsylvania

What the water is like across Eastern Pennsylvania

Bethlehem owns watershed land in the Poconos. Scranton sits behind six reservoirs feeding two plants, with the main plant on Lake Scranton itself. Allentown, Reading, Lancaster and Harrisburg each run their own supply. Protected upland surface water is soft, and Scranton publishes the clearest illustration on this site: 1.1 to 4.7 grains per gallon from the Lake Scranton plant against 7 to 29 grains from wells elsewhere in the same company's territory, a difference of roughly a factor of ten. Soft water carries little dissolved mineral, so it lays down no protective scale, and at a near neutral pH it is mildly aggressive towards metal plumbing. Corrosion control therefore does more work in this region than the pleasant taste suggests, and pinhole leaks in copper are a more common complaint here than scale.

What this means locally

Owning the watershed connects these systems and produces a specific set of household problems. Protected upland surface water arrives soft and low in mineral, which sounds ideal and has a catch: water with little dissolved mineral lays down no protective scale inside a pipe, and at a near neutral pH it is mildly aggressive towards copper. Pinhole leaks are a more common complaint across this region than scale is, and corrosion control at the plant is doing more work than the pleasant taste suggests. The second consequence is organic matter. A wooded catchment sheds natural organic material into the reservoir seasonally, that material is the precursor that reacts with the chlorine residual, and disinfection byproducts form in the mains on the way to the tap rather than at the plant. They run highest at the end of a long main in warm weather. Both point to the same modest conclusion: activated carbon at the point of use is usually the right purchase here, and a softener usually is not.

Utilities we have researched here

6 separate utilities supply the researched towns in this region, and they do not all treat water the same way.

• Capital Region Water
• City of Bethlehem Water and Sewer Resources
• City of Lancaster Bureau of Water
• City of Reading Water Authority
• Lehigh County Authority
• Pennsylvania American Water, Lake Scranton system

What that means for equipment

• 1 draw at least part of the supply from groundwater. Groundwater is steadier through the year than surface water and usually harder, and it tends to bring iron and manganese rather than the seasonal taste changes a reservoir produces.
• 5 have a published PFAS position. Where treatment is warranted it is granular activated carbon or reverse osmosis certified to NSF/ANSI 58. Where the utility already treats for it at the plant, a household system adds nothing.

Towns we cover in Eastern Pennsylvania

Each has its own page carrying the utility, the source water, the treatment and the lead position, with every figure attributed to a publisher and the year it refers to.

We serve 7 areas in Eastern Pennsylvania in total. The 1 not linked above are covered through the nearest listed town, usually because they share its water system and a separate page would repeat the same facts under a different name.

The researched towns side by side

Every figure below is taken from the town page it links to, where it carries its publisher and the year it refers to. A blank means we hold no sourced figure for that town rather than that the value is zero.

Systems we install here

Installation and service across Eastern Pennsylvania

Other regions in Pennsylvania

Or read the Pennsylvania hub for the state regulators, the PFAS and lead rules that apply across Pennsylvania, and every area we cover there.