How hard is the water in Lincoln Parish, LA?

0.1 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in Lincoln Parish, LA is 2 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 0.1 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 127 samples at 5 sites between 1992 and 2023, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 0.1 and 1.2 gpg. The whole middle of that range gives the same answer, so a test of your own tap is unlikely to change it. Confidence in the county figure: medium (how it is measured).

What to do next

You can skip the softener. At 0.1 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Lincoln Parish says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one.

More on when a softener is not worth it.

From 0.1 to 1.7 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Lincoln Parish was 1.8 mg/L and the hardest 29 mg/L, a 16-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 1.2 gpg and the bottom quarter below 0.1 gpg.

Wells 0.1 gpg, rivers and lakes 1.4 gpg

21 groundwater samples from 3 wells put the median at 2.1 mg/L. 106 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 24.5 mg/L. In Lincoln Parish the rivers and lakes come out 1.3 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. The two sources are close, so the county figure should hold whichever one your tap is on.

Lincoln Parish against the rest of Louisiana

Among the 64 Louisiana counties with data, Lincoln Parish is the softest. Across the whole country it is harder than 0% of counties.

Hardest: St. Bernard Parish at 53.9 gpg. Closest to Lincoln Parish: Winn Parish (0.1), Washington Parish (0.2), Sabine Parish (0.3).