How hard is the water in Webb County, TX?

0.8 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in Webb County, TX is 14 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 0.8 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 38 samples at 37 sites between 1990 and 2013, drawn from groundwater wells, which is what most taps and private wells in the county draw on.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 0.5 and 10.5 gpg. That spread crosses a decision line, so some homes here land on a different answer. A $10 test strip on your own tap settles it. Confidence in the county figure: high (how it is measured).

What to do next

You can skip the softener. At 0.8 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Webb County says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one. Because Webb County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.

More on when a softener is not worth it.

From 0.2 to 51.9 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Webb County was 2.6 mg/L and the hardest 889 mg/L, a 342-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 10.5 gpg and the bottom quarter below 0.5 gpg. So even in a soft county, a handful of wells here produce water hard enough to scale a heater.

Wells 0.8 gpg, rivers and lakes 15.5 gpg

38 groundwater samples from 37 wells put the median at 13.8 mg/L. 171 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 264.5 mg/L. In Webb County the rivers and lakes come out 14.7 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. A utility here that draws from the aquifer can deliver noticeably different water from a private well next door.

Webb County against the rest of Texas

Among the 217 Texas counties with data, Webb County is number 213 of 217 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 5% of counties.

Softest in Texas: Nacogdoches County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Ward County at 218.5 gpg. Closest to Webb County: Jim Hogg County (0.8), Rusk County (0.6), Orange County (1.1).