On 17 October 2024 the water in Sibley's mains stopped being Sibley's water. After a 34-year wait the town became the twentieth and final member connected to the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System, and what now arrives at the meter is finished water piped in from a plant at Vermillion, South Dakota, softened before it ever crosses the state line. Hardness fell from roughly 23 to 25 grains to about 8.8. If you have read a hardness figure for Sibley anywhere online, check its date — almost everything published about this town describes a supply that was switched off in October 2024.
| Sibley at a glance | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Who supplies the water | Sibley Public Water Supply, PWSID IA7245047, serving 2,860 people across 1,364 service connections in EPA SDWIS — classified as a purchased-groundwater system |
| Where it comes from | Wells in the Elk Point alluvial aquifer at Mulberry Point near Vermillion, South Dakota, delivered through the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System since 17 October 2024 |
| Softened at the plant | Yes — but not in Sibley. The supplier's plant runs conventional lime-soda softening. Sibley itself operates no treatment: both of its own plants are deactivated in EPA SDWIS |
| Published hardness | 150 mg/L (8.8 grains) for 2025 and 155 mg/L (9.1 grains) for 2024, published by the city in its own Consumer Confidence Reports. This is the supplier's system-wide average, not a sample taken in Sibley |
The switch is not marketing; it is visible in three separate records. The regional system's own announcement dates the first flow to Sibley to 17 October 2024 and describes the town as its twentieth and final member, with 650,000 gallons a day of reserved capacity.
The federal inventory agrees. On 25 October 2024, EPA SDWIS deactivated Sibley's connection to its old supplier, the sampling tap on that connection, and the town's last remaining treatment plant, all on the same day. A fourth record closed the same day is the connection running the other way — during commissioning Sibley briefly fed the new line before the flow reversed for good.
And the city's own annual reports track it. The report covering 2024 still names two suppliers, because for most of that year there were two. The report covering 2025, dated 2 April 2026, names exactly one.
Until 16 October 2024, Sibley bought its water from a rural system pumping shallow alluvial wells in the Ocheyedan River valley. That water was hard and the state record says so plainly. Iowa DNR sampling put the old supplier's finished water at 433 mg/L on 7 April 2020 and 390 mg/L on 8 August 2022 at the distribution entry, with 412.57 mg/L measured at the plant tap on 21 June 2021. In grains: 22.8 to 25.3. The raw wellheads behind it ran 320 to 560 mg/L, which tells you the old plant did many useful things but removing hardness was not one of them.
Against 150 mg/L today, that is a drop of roughly two thirds. No equipment inside anyone's home had anything to do with it. We would rather say that plainly, because your city publishes the number and you can check us in one click.
Here is the honest limit of what anybody can tell you. There is no hardness sample for Sibley. The Iowa DNR drinking water portal holds zero results for hardness under PWSID IA7245047 — not since 1990, not since 1900. There is none under the Iowa segment of the regional system either, because the plant that actually treats this water sits in South Dakota and reports to South Dakota.
So the 150 mg/L figure is the supplier's system-wide average for its finished water, republished by the City of Sibley in its own report. The supplier's operations page gives the same number and puts the working range at 8.5 to 9.5 grains. That is a sourced, defensible figure. It is not a lab result from a Sibley tap. The only measurement that describes your house is one taken at your house.
It is worth knowing how thoroughly the town left the water production business, because it explains why there is nothing local to sample. The Iowa DNR source water tracker lists six Sibley wells and not one is in service. Well #1 from 1934 reached 712 feet into the Dakota Sandstone and is plugged. Well #3 from 1960 at 740 feet and Well #5 from 1984 at 750 feet are also plugged. Well #2 from 1946 went 757 feet into the Dakota and the Cambrian rock beneath it and is listed as not used, as is a 175-foot sand and gravel well from 1942. Well #4 from 1979, at 759 feet, is standby and nothing more.
The federal inventory adds a seventh well from 1991, and it records that well and Well #4 as deactivated on the very same day: 25 September 1997. That was the day Sibley stopped drinking its own deep sandstone water and started buying. In the Iowa DNR sample record, back to 1900, no hardness reading was ever taken at any Sibley wellhead, so there is no aquifer number to publish either — plugged, standby or otherwise.
The supplier's plant went online on 30 July 2012 and treats water drawn from wells in the Elk Point alluvium beside the Missouri River — groundwater in regulatory terms, not a river intake. Its federal treatment records carry the softening objective — the plant exists to take hardness out.
The sequence is conventional lime-soda softening: lime slaked and dosed into large upflow solids-contact clarifiers, where calcium and magnesium drop out as solids; carbon dioxide added back afterwards to bring the pH down, a step called recarbonation; sedimentation; then dual-media sand and anthracite filters. Disinfection follows, then fluoride, then a phosphate corrosion inhibitor. The operator states that high hardness is reduced to approximately nine grains per gallon, which is exactly what the city's reports show arriving here.
One consequence for you: 8.8 grains still sits inside the USGS “hard” band, which runs from 121 to 180 mg/L. Lime softening is run to a target that protects the mains and the plant economics, not to zero. It is a genuinely good number for northwest Iowa and it is nowhere near soft.
The switch brought a second change that got far less attention than the hardness did. Since 17 October 2024 Sibley's water has been disinfected with chloramine — chlorine combined with ammonia — rather than the free chlorine the old supplier used. The city said so in advance, in a public notice titled “Sibley Water Disinfection Process to Change in 2024”, and that notice named the two groups who needed to act: fish owners and dialysis providers.
Chloramine is used because it is stable. It holds a residual much further out into a distribution system than free chlorine does, which is exactly what a town at the end of a very long pipe needs. That same stability is why it behaves differently in your kitchen. Free chlorine largely leaves a pitcher of water left standing overnight, and boiling drives it off quickly. Chloramine does neither. It stays.
It also means the filter media question is different here than in a free-chlorine town. Standard granular activated carbon, the media in most pitcher and fridge filters, is slow against chloramine. The media class built for it is catalytic carbon, which is engineered for exactly this. If you keep an aquarium, treat every fill as chloraminated and use a conditioner rated for chloramine and ammonia, not a plain dechlorinator. If someone in the household is on home dialysis, the city's own notice is to speak to your provider, and that advice stands unchanged. And if what you notice is simply that the water tastes and smells different from the way it did in 2023, that is not your imagination — it is a different disinfectant.
One reading note, because it trips people up: the city's report lists a distribution-system figure of 0.90 ppm under the heading “chlorine.” That is total chlorine, which is how chloraminated systems are required to report. It is not evidence that Sibley went back to free chlorine.
About 8.8 grains, chloraminated, arriving as finished water with no local treatment behind it. That combination changes what we recommend here compared with a town on its own hard wells. Every price 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.
The October 2024 switch was a city switch. If you live on an acreage outside the city limits you may still be on the rural system that Sibley left, which is genuinely different water — the same distribution-system samples that read 433 mg/L in April 2020 and 390 mg/L in August 2022 describe that supply, not a supply that was switched off. And if you are on your own well in the Ocheyedan valley, you have no plant, no softening step and no monitoring at all unless you arrange it. Iowa DNR recommends testing a private well every year, and Iowa's Private Well Grants program pays for county lab testing at no cost to you. 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 fit 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.
There is a specific reason to care about that here. Sibley is a town where the honest answer is “your water got a lot better and you need less equipment than you would have needed in 2023.” A company that quotes you 25 grains in Sibley today is either working from a stale table or hoping you will not check. Your city publishes the real number.
Sibley's supply changed twice over on a single day — a new source, a new disinfectant — and the public numbers describing it are system averages from ninety miles away. A test at your own kitchen sink settles what is actually reaching your fixtures, whether a softener installed for the old water is now set far too aggressively, and what your heater has been through. We come to you, measure, and leave the readings and a written quote at no charge. Call or text 319-319-6566, email ryan@kindwaterco.com, or book your free in-home water test.
About 150 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is roughly 8.8 grains per gallon. The City of Sibley published that figure for 2025 in its Consumer Confidence Report dated 2 April 2026, and 155 mg/L (9.1 grains) for 2024. Be aware that it is the supplier's system-wide average for its finished water rather than a sample taken in Sibley — the Iowa DNR sample database holds no hardness result for PWSID IA7245047 at all.
Yes. On 17 October 2024 Sibley became the twentieth and final member connected to the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System, and EPA SDWIS deactivated the connection to the old supplier, its sampling tap and Sibley's last treatment plant on 25 October 2024. Hardness went from roughly 23 to 25 grains to about 8.8, and the disinfectant changed from free chlorine to chloramine at the same time.
It is a smaller job than it used to be, but 8.8 grains still sits in the USGS hard band, which runs from 121 to 180 mg/L. That is enough to leave spots on glassware, cut soap lather and build scale in a water heater over time. What it also means is that a softener in Sibley regenerates less often and uses noticeably less salt than the same unit would have here before October 2024.
Yes, since 17 October 2024. The city announced the change in advance in a notice titled “Sibley Water Disinfection Process to Change in 2024” and named fish owners and dialysis providers as the two groups needing to act. Chloramine does not dissipate the way free chlorine does, so it will not boil off or leave a pitcher standing overnight, and the carbon media class built for it is catalytic carbon rather than standard granular activated carbon.
A Kind Water Co softener is $2,500, or $2,850 paired with reverse osmosis. 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.
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