Hawarden draws its entire supply from sand and gravel between 32 and 44 feet below the Big Sioux River floodplain, and the plant on the edge of town does three things to it: kills germs, adds fluoride, and doses a polyphosphate that stops iron and manganese from staining fixtures. Not one of those steps takes a mineral out. No agency has ever published a hardness figure for Hawarden either — not the state, not the city, not in sixty-six years of sampling records. This page tells you what the public record actually holds, and is plain about where it stops.
| Hawarden at a glance | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Who supplies the water | Hawarden Water Supply, PWSID IA8434040, a city-owned community system serving 2,700 people across 1,058 service connections in EPA SDWIS |
| Where it comes from | Eight active alluvial wells in the Big Sioux River floodplain, 32.5 to 44 feet deep, per the Iowa DNR Source Water Protection Tracker. No water is purchased from anyone |
| Softened at the plant | No. All nine EPA treatment records for IA8434040 sit under disinfection, iron, manganese and fluoridation objectives. A server-side query of the federal treatment table for a softening objective on this PWSID returns an empty set |
| Published hardness | None. Every hardness analyte in the Iowa DNR sample database returns zero rows for this system across 1960 to 2026, and Hawarden's water quality reports print no hardness figure |
The Iowa DNR Source Water Protection Tracker carries twelve wells for Hawarden. Eight are in normal service, every one of them logged as alluvial: Well #3 from 1950 at 42.5 feet, Well #4 from 1957 at 37.5 feet, Well #6 from 1960 at 37.5 feet, Well #7 from 1967 at 44 feet, Well #8 from 1977 at 40 feet, Well #9 from 1978 at 32.5 feet, and Wells #10 and #11, both drilled in 1993, both at 41 feet.
Around that working eight sits the history. Well #5, drilled in 1957 to 35.5 feet, is standby and carries an emergency availability code federally, so it does not belong in the everyday range. Wells #1 and #2, sunk in 1924 and 1931 to 36 feet apiece, are plugged — the federal facility list still names them “plugged well” — and so is the entry point they fed, which is why anything sampled there belongs to a supply Hawarden stopped drinking decades ago.
Two discrepancies are worth stating rather than smoothing over. The federal inventory dates Well #8 to 1974 while the state tracker says 1977; and a Well #12 shows as active federally while the state tracker gives it no drill date, zero depth and a status of “not used”, so we publish nothing for it. What all of it means at a kitchen sink is simple: water standing thirty to forty-odd feet under a river floodplain is in short conversation with the surface, arrives quickly, changes with the season, and carries whatever the alluvium is handing over that month.
Nine federal treatment records exist for Hawarden, all of them on Plant #1. Three cover disinfection — chlorination, gaseous chlorination, and a row credited with four-log inactivation of viruses. Four are polyphosphate sequestration, filed twice against iron and twice against manganese. The last two are fluoridation with fluorosilicic acid. There is no filter, no aerator, no lime plant, no ion exchange, no reverse osmosis and no nitrate step anywhere in the record.
Sequestration is the part worth slowing down for, because it is easy to mistake for treatment. A polyphosphate is a chemical handcuff. It grips dissolved iron and manganese and keeps them from dropping out of solution, so the water runs clear, the laundry does not go orange and the mains do not silt up. From the city's side that is a sensible, inexpensive and entirely legitimate way to run a distribution system.
What it does not do is take a single milligram of anything out of the water. Every mineral the well field pumped that morning is still in the glass. And the handcuff is temperature-sensitive: heat sequestered water in a water heater and the polyphosphate breaks down, releasing what it was holding. Calcium and magnesium then scale the element exactly as they would have if nothing had been added at all.
Sequestration is also the tell. A utility that holds iron in solution instead of filtering it out is a utility with no mineral-removal process at all. Whatever hardness the floodplain delivers to those eight wells is the hardness that reaches your house.
We checked this harder than usual, because a missing number invites guessing. The Iowa DNR drinking water portal was run against Hawarden Water Supply with the date range opened from 1960 through 2026, asking for every hardness analyte the state keeps: total hardness as calcium carbonate, carbonate hardness, non-carbonate hardness, calcium and magnesium hardness, calcium hardness, and total hardness in grains per gallon. All six came back with zero rows. Magnesium on its own came back with zero rows too.
The same session returned 160 nitrate results, 13 sodium results and four calcium results for this system, which is how we know the query was aimed correctly and the emptiness is genuine. Hawarden's own water quality reports print no hardness either; the 2020 edition tabulates radium, disinfection byproducts, lead, copper, chlorine, fluoride, sodium and nitrate, and nothing else.
So we will not put a figure on this page, and we will not lift one from a neighboring town or a hardness-by-city table. A number measured twenty miles away describes that aquifer, not the sand your wells sit in.
Here is the closest the record comes. Four calcium results exist, all taken in the distribution system: 130 mg/L at 708 10th Street and 130 mg/L at 1609 Avenue E, both on 7 March 1994; 140 mg/L the same day at a point whose collection address reads “entry point”; and 147 mg/L on 22 April 1985. Alkalinity on those 1994 samples ran 300 to 304 mg/L. Calcium converts to hardness by multiplying by 2.497, so 130 to 147 mg/L of calcium works out to 325 to 367 mg/L as calcium carbonate, or 19.0 to 21.5 grains per gallon.
Two cautions come attached, and they matter. That is arithmetic performed on a calcium result, not a hardness measurement anyone took. And it is a floor rather than a total: hardness is calcium plus magnesium, no magnesium result exists for this system at all, and the true figure is therefore higher by an amount nobody can state. The samples are also thirty and forty years old.
It still tells you something useful. Nineteen grains of calcium hardness alone, in a system that removes no minerals, is not the profile of a soft-water town. The real figure for your house has to be measured at your own tap, which is what we do for free.
Shallow wells in row-crop country come with a nitrate record, and Hawarden's is public. The plant tap has been sampled 48 times since 2015, averaging 4.62 mg/L against a federal limit of 10 mg/L. The highest of those readings was 9.0 mg/L on 13 April 2022. The full 2025 series ran 4.7 mg/L in January, 7.7 in April, 4.1 in July and 3.5 in October — a spring peak, which is exactly the pattern you would predict from wells this shallow.
The state's view of this aquifer type is printed in Hawarden's own water quality report: the Iowa DNR determined the alluvial aquifer highly susceptible to contamination because the overlying materials “provide little protection from contamination at the land surface”. That is the DNR's standard determination for alluvial systems across Iowa rather than a special judgment on this town, and it is worth reading as geology rather than alarm. It is nonetheless accurate about how this kind of water behaves.
On treatment we will be careful, because nitrate is health-regulated and you deserve precision. EPA lists reverse osmosis, ion exchange and electrodialysis as best available technologies for nitrate. We will not tell you what a particular system would do to a particular reading in your house; ask us to test first. What is not in dispute is that Hawarden's plant has no nitrate process, so the utility's published monitoring describes what arrives at your door.
The most recent sodium result for Hawarden is 28.385 mg/L, taken on 7 January 2026 at the plant tap fed by wells 3, 4 and 6 through 11 — finished water, not a raw well sample. Behind it runs a triennial series at the same tap: 22.92 mg/L in 2023, 25 in 2020, 24 in 2017, 24 in 2014, 25 in 2011, 24 in 2008, 27 in 2005 and 26 in 2002. Distribution samples from 1988 and 1991 sit in the same band, so the honest summary is 22 to 28 mg/L since 1988.
That sodium is geological, and the treatment record is what proves it: there is no softening objective and no ion exchange step anywhere in the nine records for this system, so nothing at the plant is trading calcium for sodium before the water reaches you. For a homeowner it is a useful starting point, because an ion-exchange softener makes precisely that trade, and beginning from a low sodium base is the comfortable place to begin.
No softening at the plant, no published hardness figure to argue about, and a calcium floor of roughly nineteen to twenty-one grains before magnesium is even counted. Every price below is all-in: equipment, installation by a licensed local plumbing professional, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty.
Annual maintenance is $199 a year for a tank-RO home and $249 for a tankless-RO home. A full diagnostic service call is $199; a known-issue trip is $99 plus the part. We offer 0% financing, and $100 off for military and first responders. Ask for the written breakdown before you schedule, or start one through our instant quote.
A private well east and south of town is drawing on the same shallow Big Sioux alluvium the city uses, without the chlorination and without the monitoring schedule a municipal system is held to. Iowa DNR recommends testing a private well every year, and Iowa's Private Well Grants program covers free county lab testing for exactly that. Our well water setup is a dual-tank system at $3,450, or $3,800 with tank RO, with UV disinfection at $700 and sediment pre-filtration at $500 when the readings call for them. We specify tank RO rather than tankless on a well, because high dissolved solids cost a tankless unit its pressure. Start with free well water testing.
We are licensed and insured, and our softeners are built from NSF/ANSI 44 certified components and our reverse osmosis systems are certified to NSF/ANSI 58. Installation is handled by licensed local plumbing professionals we vet, schedule and stand behind. Pricing is published and all-in, so the figure you read here is the figure on the paperwork. Distance and site conditions are the only things that can change it, and we tell you before you agree.
Hawarden is one of the towns we have researched where nobody can quote you a hardness number, because no agency has ever published one. That is not a reason to guess, and it is certainly not a reason to buy from whoever guesses highest. We drive to Hawarden, test at your own kitchen sink, hand you the readings in writing and quote from the same published price list every other house gets. Call or text 319-319-6566, email ryan@kindwaterco.com, or book your free in-home water test.
No one has published a figure. Every hardness analyte in the Iowa DNR sample database returns zero rows for Hawarden Water Supply with the date range opened from 1960 through 2026, and the city's water quality reports print no hardness either. The closest the record comes is calcium: 130 to 147 mg/L in distribution samples taken in 1994 and 1985, which converts arithmetically to 325 to 367 mg/L as calcium carbonate, or 19.0 to 21.5 grains per gallon of calcium hardness alone. That is a floor, not a total, because no magnesium result exists for this system. The only way to know your figure is to measure it at your tap.
No. All nine EPA treatment records for PWSID IA8434040 fall under disinfection, iron, manganese and fluoridation objectives, and a query of the federal treatment table filtered to a softening objective on this PWSID returns an empty set. There is no lime plant, no ion exchange and no filter. Hardness is not a regulated contaminant and no Iowa utility is required to remove it.
It hides minerals rather than removing them. The plant doses a polyphosphate that holds dissolved iron and manganese in solution so they do not stain fixtures or settle in the mains. Nothing leaves the water. Polyphosphate also breaks down under heat, so once that water reaches a water heater the minerals it was holding are released and scale the element exactly as they would have without it.
Eight active wells in the Big Sioux River floodplain, all logged by the Iowa DNR as alluvial and all between 32.5 and 44 feet deep: Well #3 from 1950, Wells #4 and #6 from 1957 and 1960, Well #7 from 1967, Well #8 from 1977, Well #9 from 1978 and Wells #10 and #11 from 1993. A ninth well is held on standby for emergencies, and the 1924 and 1931 wells are plugged. Hawarden buys no water from anyone.
A Kind Water Co softener is $2,500, or $2,850 paired with reverse osmosis. The XL softener is $2,800, or $3,150 with RO, and a standalone RO system is $800 for the tank model or $900 tankless. Every figure is all-in with equipment, installation by a licensed local plumbing professional, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty, with 0% financing and $100 off for military and first responders.
Every figure on this page comes from a public record you can open for yourself.
Whole-home water softening, filtration, and reverse-osmosis drinking water — professionally installed and built to last a lifetime.
Serving Marion, Cedar Rapids & surrounding Linn County communities
Kind Water Co is a d/b/a of Zero Cap Investments LLC · 2258 Bison St, Apt B, Marion, IA 52302
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