Cahaba Water Co.
Your city is not your water utility, and the difference matters
Hoover alone is served by four separate water systems, and they do not publish the same numbers.
The short version
- The City of Hoover publishes that four separate utilities serve different parts of the city, depending on the subdivision.
- Those utilities publish hardness figures ranging from about 5 grains per gallon to about 13, so the answer genuinely changes by street.
- Your water bill names your utility, and that is the fastest way to find out.
- Leeds Water Works publishes no hardness figure at all, which means for those addresses a test is the only number that exists.
Almost every article about water in this metro starts by naming a city and then quoting a single hardness figure for it. That structure is convenient and it is frequently wrong, because around here the city boundary and the water system boundary are not the same shape, and in some places they are not close.
Hoover, which is served by four utilities
The City of Hoover publishes this itself on its own utilities page, and it is the clearest example in the metro of why the city name is the wrong unit.
| Where in Hoover | Water utility |
|---|---|
| Most of the city | Central Alabama Water |
| Greystone, excluding Greystone Highlands | Shelby County Water Services |
| Lake Cyrus and Ross Bridge | Bessemer Water |
| Quail Run and Valley Station | Pelham Water Works |
Four utilities, one city, and a resident in Greystone and a resident two miles away are reading different annual reports with different numbers in them. Anyone quoting a single hardness figure for Hoover is describing at most one of these four situations and is silent about the other three.
The numbers are not close to each other
This would be a trivia point if all the utilities published similar figures. They do not.
| Utility | Published total hardness | Grains per gallon |
|---|---|---|
| Central Alabama Water | 38 to 224 mg/L across the system | 2.2 to 13.1 |
| Shelby County Water Services | 86 and 95 ppm, two plants | 5.0 and 5.6 |
| Pelham Water Works | 75 and 204 mg/L, two sources | 4.4 and 11.9 |
| Trussville Gas & Water | 152 mg/L, one source | 8.9 |
| Alabaster Water Board | 195 ppm wells; 86 and 95 purchased | 11.4; 5.0 and 5.6 |
| Leeds Water Works | not published | not published |
The spread across those rows runs from slightly hard to very hard. A softener is an easy recommendation at the top of that table and a questionable purchase at the bottom, which is the practical reason any of this matters to a homeowner rather than being a piece of municipal trivia.
Why one of them publishes a range and others publish a number
It comes down to where the water starts.
Central Alabama Water runs a large surface water system from several plants and publishes one system wide range covering all of it, with no breakdown by plant or neighborhood in the report. That is why a resident served by it cannot narrow down their own figure from the document; the range describes what the system can deliver, not what arrives at any particular house.
Trussville is the opposite case. Every drop it delivers comes from the same set of wells, so one figure genuinely covers the whole town. Pelham and Alabaster sit in between, because each of them operates its own wells and also buys treated surface water, and the two sources are not similar. Pelham publishes 75 and 204 mg/L in the same report, which is one of the widest single-utility spreads we hold, and which one reaches a given house depends on where that house sits in the distribution system.
The case where no number exists
Leeds Water Works publishes no hardness figure at all, in the regulated table or the unregulated one. This is not an oversight and it is not a failing on their part. Hardness is not a regulated contaminant under the federal rules, so no utility is required to report it, and some do not.
For an address on Leeds Water Works, that means there is no published number to look up anywhere. A test is not a double check against the utility's figure; it is the only figure that will ever exist for that house.
How to find out which one serves you
Look at your water bill. The utility's name is on it, and that settles the question in about ten seconds without anyone having to interpret a map for you.
If you are between houses, buying, or trying to work this out for an address you do not have a bill for yet, the city or county utilities page is usually the next best source, and in Hoover's case it is authoritative because the city publishes the subdivision breakdown directly.
Once you know the utility, the published figures above tell you what the system delivers. What your own tap delivers is still a separate question, which is why we mail tests rather than quote from a table.
Find your number, not your city's
Tell us your utility and we will tell you what it publishes. Then run the test we mail you and we will tell you what your own address actually gets.
See every utility we hold a report forQuestions we get about this
Why does my neighbor have different water than I do?
If you are in a part of the metro where utility boundaries cut through neighborhoods, which Hoover demonstrably is, you may genuinely be on different systems. Even on the same utility, Central Alabama Water publishes a range of 2.2 to 13.1 grains per gallon with no neighborhood breakdown, so two addresses on one system can differ.
Is there a map of which utility serves which street?
Not a single consolidated one that we have found for the whole metro. Individual cities publish their own, and Hoover's is unusually clear about subdivisions. Your water bill is faster and more reliable than any map.
Leeds does not publish hardness. Is that allowed?
Yes. Hardness is not a regulated contaminant, so reporting it is not required. The utility is meeting its obligations; the figure simply is not one of them.
Does the utility change what equipment I need?
It changes the starting point. A system publishing 11.9 grains and one publishing 5.0 lead to different recommendations, and one of those recommendations is frequently that you do not need softening at all.
Sources
- City of Hoover. Water Services, which utility serves which part of the city.
- Central Alabama Water. 2026 Annual Water Quality Report (2025 monitoring data). System wide total hardness.
- Trussville Gas & Water, Pelham Water Works, Alabaster Water Board and Shelby County Water Services. Consumer Confidence Reports on file, hardness by source.
- Leeds Water Works. Consumer Confidence Report on file; no hardness figure is published in either the regulated or unregulated table.