Moline’s tap water has already been through a softening step before it reaches your street. River water from the city’s intake in Sylvan Slough is pumped into large cone-shaped clarifiers, where lime, an iron salt and polymers are mixed in, and the City of Moline’s own treatment-plant diagram says that at this stage “nearly half of the dissolved calcium and magnesium is removed.” That puts a Moline household in an unusual spot for a river city. The question is not whether the water was softened; it is whether the hardness the plant leaves behind is still enough to scale a water heater or spot the glassware. Moline does not publish a finished hardness number, so that answer has to come from a reading at your own sink.
We install water softeners, whole-home filtration and reverse osmosis drinking-water systems in Moline homes, and we repair and maintain the equipment already sitting in basements here, including brands we did not sell. For acreages outside the city mains we build complete well systems. The installation itself is done by licensed local plumbing professionals we vet, schedule, and stand behind, and Kind Water Co is licensed and insured.
Because Moline water arrives partly softened, we do not walk in assuming you need a softener. The first visit is a free in-home water test that measures hardness, iron and total dissolved solids at your kitchen sink, and you see the readings as they come up. That test does not cover bacteria, nitrate, arsenic, lead or PFAS; those need a certified laboratory. Travel is free for the first 50 miles and $1 a mile beyond that, and any travel charge is quoted before you agree to anything. To get started, book the free in-home water test or run an instant quote.
| Moline at a glance | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Who supplies the water | City of Moline Utilities Department, PWSID IL1610450, serving 44,500 people through 16,722 service connections in EPA SDWIS |
| Where it comes from | The Mississippi River, through an intake in Sylvan Slough; the federal record lists one active river intake and one surface water treatment plant |
| Softened at the plant? | Yes, partly. Lime softening in the clarifiers removes nearly half of the dissolved calcium and magnesium, according to the City of Moline, and softening is listed among the plant’s treatment objectives in EPA’s federal record |
| Published hardness | None published. Moline’s 2023, 2024 and 2025 water quality reports print no hardness figure, and no hardness analyte appears in Illinois EPA’s Drinking Water Watch listing for this system |
Moline’s 2025 Water Quality Report lists twelve treatment processes: screening, oxidation, absorption, disinfection, clarification, softening, sedimentation, recarbonation, sequestering, filtration, UV disinfection and fluoridation. The city’s plant diagram, last updated in 2015, shows the order they happen in.
The same report puts the scale plainly: nearly 2 billion gallons of Mississippi River water treated a year for more than 17,000 customers, more than 230 miles of water main, and a plant staffed around the clock.
Two things in that sequence matter when you are choosing equipment. Moline disinfects with chloramines rather than chlorine alone, and whole-home filters carry separate performance claims for chlorine and for chloramine, so a filter rated for one is not automatically rated for the other. And because a softener’s regeneration setting depends directly on incoming hardness, a softener on partly softened Moline water should be set from your measured number, never from a default.
Moline’s plant does not serve Moline alone. The federal record for Silvis, PWSID IL1610700, lists a “Moline Interconnection” as a primary source of purchased surface water, so treated Moline water is part of the Silvis supply.
Moline’s own record lists eight more connections, all marked emergency: five with Rock Island, at 1st Avenue, 19th Avenue, Wildwood, Wilderness Court and Deer Run, and three with East Moline, at 55th, 60th and 70th Streets. Those are standby links between systems, not an everyday supply. Rock Island and East Moline each run their own Mississippi River plant, and neither has a softening objective in its federal treatment record, so living a few blocks across a city line can mean water that was treated quite differently.
EPA’s federal record lists two violations for Moline’s water system, and neither is health-based.
Neither is a maximum contaminant level exceedance. On lead, Moline’s 2025 report gives a 90th percentile of 3.8 parts per billion against the 15 ppb action level, with no sites above it, and says the city will replace around 5,000 lead service lines over the next ten years, doing the replacement itself so homeowners do not need to hire a plumber. If lead is your worry, that is a question for the city’s program and a certified laboratory; our in-home test does not measure lead.
On partly softened city water, your own reading decides whether to start at the kitchen tap or at the main line. All prices are all-in: equipment, installation, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty.
Maintenance is $199 a year for a tank-RO home and $249 a year for a tankless-RO home. A diagnostic service call is $199, and a trip for a known issue is $99 plus the part; if an older softener is the trouble, our water softener repair guide covers what usually fails. We offer 0% financing, and $100 off for military and first responders.
Beyond the reach of Moline’s mains, a private well gets none of the plant’s twelve steps and none of its testing. The Rock Island County Health Department offers water sampling and inspections for existing and new water supplies; water testing is available Monday through Wednesday, with test types and prices on the department’s fee schedule, and the office is at (309) 793-1955. Go there, or to another certified laboratory, for bacteria and nitrate, because our in-home test does not cover them.
Once a well has tested safe, we build the treatment around your readings: a dual-tank system sized from hardness and iron, a sediment pre-filter where the water carries grit, and UV as a supplemental NSF/ANSI 55 Class B unit for water that has already tested safe. UV is never the fix for a contaminated well.
Moline’s plant takes out nearly half of the calcium and magnesium before the water leaves. The only way to know what is left at your house, and whether it is worth doing anything about, is to measure it. We test hardness, iron and total dissolved solids at your kitchen sink, show you the numbers, and leave a written quote with no obligation. Book your free in-home water test, try the instant quote, or call or text 319-319-6566.
Rock Island County · Quad Cities · East Moline · Rock Island · Silvis · Coal Valley · Milan
Yes, partly. In the cone-shaped clarifiers at the Moline water treatment plant, lime is added and, according to the city's treatment diagram, nearly half of the dissolved calcium and magnesium is removed. Softening is one of the twelve processes listed in Moline's 2025 Water Quality Report, and EPA's federal treatment record for PWSID IL1610450 lists softening as a treatment objective.
No figure is published. Moline's 2023, 2024 and 2025 water quality reports do not print a hardness number, and no hardness analyte appears in Illinois EPA's Drinking Water Watch listing for the system. Because the plant removes only part of the hardness, the only reliable number for your home is one measured at your own tap, which our free in-home water test does.
Not necessarily. Moline's plant already removes nearly half of the calcium and magnesium, so we measure hardness, iron and total dissolved solids at your kitchen sink before recommending anything. If the remaining hardness is worth treating, a softener is $2,500, or $2,850 with reverse osmosis, all-in with equipment, installation, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty. If it is not, reverse osmosis at the kitchen sink on its own is $800 with a tank or $900 tankless.
Yes. We repair and maintain existing softeners, filters and reverse osmosis systems, including brands we did not sell. A diagnostic service call is $199, and a trip for a known issue is $99 plus the part. Any installation work is done by licensed local plumbing professionals we vet, schedule, and stand behind.
The federal record for Silvis, PWSID IL1610700, lists a Moline interconnection as a primary source of purchased surface water. Moline's own record separately lists eight emergency interconnections, five with Rock Island and three with East Moline, which are standby links rather than an everyday supply.
Every number on this page comes from a public record. Here is where to open each one yourself.
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