Updated November 1, 2026

Philadelphia water depends on which river you're on

Philadelphia drinks from two rivers it shares with millions of people upstream. The Delaware feeds the Baxter plant in the Northeast. The Schuylkill feeds Queen Lane and Belmont. The two rivers produce noticeably different water, and road salt widens the gap every winter.

Three plants, compared

Delaware water from Baxter is the softest and lowest in sodium. Schuylkill water is harder, saltier and swings more. PWD says chloride and dissolved solids can climb in winter from road salt runoff and during droughts. The top of Queen Lane's chloride range, 397 ppm, is above EPA's non-health secondary guideline of 250 ppm, which concerns taste. To read your own number in grains, use our hardness converter.

How PWD treats it

The plants disinfect with chloramine and add fluoride. They also add zinc orthophosphate, which forms a thin protective coating inside pipes so less metal dissolves into the water. At the plants, the disinfectant residual ranged from 1.77 to 3.90 ppm across the three facilities in 2025, well above the 0.20 ppm minimum.

PFAS: under today's rules, upgrading for tomorrow's

This is where Philadelphia differs from many big cities. The Delaware and Schuylkill drain industrial land, and PFAS show up at low levels. In PWD's 2025 system-wide sampling, PFOA ranged from 2.6 to 6.1 ppt and PFOS from 1.6 to 4.6 ppt. Pennsylvania's enforceable limits are 14 ppt for PFOA and 18 ppt for PFOS, and PWD reported no violation. EPA's national limits of 4 ppt each are stricter and are judged on running annual averages once they take effect. Earlier federal UCMR 5 sampling, from January to October 2024, averaged 4.6 ppt for PFOA and 3.6 ppt for PFOS, with single results as high as 8.1 and 6.0 ppt.

PWD says it is upgrading its treatment plants with advanced technology to meet the new PFAS rules, as part of a decades-long Water Revitalization Plan. Until then, if PFAS is your main concern, look for a filter certified to NSF/ANSI 53 or 58 for PFOA and PFOS. Our filter selector walks through the options.

Lead lives in old houses, not the mains

In the most recent tap sampling, the 90th-percentile lead result was 2.0 ppb. One of 106 homes was above the 15 ppb action level, and the range was 0 to 21 ppb. PWD notes that lead was used less after the 1950s, but solder and brass fixtures could still contain it, and brass could until as late as 2014. If your home predates those changes, it's worth testing. PWD is piloting programs to find and remove lead plumbing over the next decade and offers free lead testing for schools and childcare centers.

The Manayunk Canal is flowing again

Not every item in the report is about chemistry. Flat Rock Dam on the Schuylkill fed water into the Manayunk Canal, which powered factories from the 1820s to the 1940s. The canal was closed in the 1940s and sat stagnant for decades, with algae, odors and trash. PWD has rebuilt the connection with a new intake to restore fresh flow — part of its wider watershed work.