There Are Acceptable Levels of WHAT in Lubbock Water?

City of Lubbock water has a bad rep generally. I mean, it's not great tasting nor is it particularly forgiving, but it's not... the worst? I guess the reputation is deserved, but I grew up in Lubbock and drinking my fair share of tap water and it never hurt me.

I think. But I also drank out of the water hose, and apparently that's bad for you.

That being said, the City of Lubbock Water Quality report just dropped, and woo boy does it look bad on paper to a person who has no idea what's going on. When they start you off with, "It's normal for all drinking water to contain trace amounts of minerals and other substances,” it seems like they’re setting you up to find plenty of other substances in the water here in the Hub City.

Let's “find out exactly what is in your superior-quality water supply" together.

You can find the entire report here, but I want to look at the table that has all of the information about what's in the water.

It's a little disconcerting that there is arsenic, uranium and cyanide in Lubbock’s water, but all are within the minimum and maximum levels, except for the cyanide. The cyanide has neither a minimum nor maximum level; there just seems to be a much larger amount than anything else in the water.

What's also disconcerting is the places that these runoffs are coming from. There's fertilizer factory runoff in my acceptable quality drinking water? Now that you mention it, that's kind of what Lubbock water tastes like sometimes.

There's also delicious nitrate from more fertilizer runoff and "septic tank leachate, sewage, erosion.” YUM.

I'll still drink it, but I'm going to price check some water filters for my apartment.