New York, New York

Catskill / Delaware / Croton water. Soft-to-moderate hardness on the DEP table. Free chlorine, not chloramine.

Cited numbers from the utility report. Length follows the printed value against a labeled scale — not a health ranking. If the report has no number, it is not on the chart.

Hardness16–90 mg/L (avg 25)
Free chlorineavg 0.5 mg/L
IronND–123 µg/L (avg 30)

On the report

Water utility: New York City Department of Environmental Protection
Hardness: 2024 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report: hardness 16–90 mg/L as CaCO3 (average 25 mg/L). Soft to moderately hard. Croton runs harder than Catskill/Delaware. — NYC DEP 2024 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report
Disinfectant: Free chlorine residual. 2024 table: ND–1.6 mg/L, average 0.5 mg/L. Not chloramine. — NYC DEP 2024 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report
Brine / salt to the sewer: No district prohibition found in current research. No NYC DEP or DEP sewer rule like the SCV brine ban turned up. A softener is usually the wrong machine on this supply anyway. Ask the agency on the bill.

Also around here

Extra context besides the utility report and the chart above — geology, an unregulated table, or a published study. Not a second set of printed tap numbers.

MicroplasticsWHO’s 2019 review examined studies that found microplastic particles in treated tap and bottled water in many places. That is a published-occurrence finding, not a number from this city’s water-quality report, and we do not invent a particles-per-liter count for the tap.Microplastics in drinking-water — World Health Organization
PFASEPA’s Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule required community systems this size to test 29 PFAS and lithium in 2023–2025. Open the UCMR 5 Data Finder for this PWS. This file does not invent a detection.Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

What actually fits

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If a dealer is selling you a softener anyway

This supply is soft on the published numbers. A salt tank is usually the wrong box unless you are on a well or a different utility. Test the tap before you buy hardness equipment.

Shop water test kits

If the shower just smells like the pool

A single black whole-house carbon tank with a control head, installed in a garage and connected to copper pipe. — Whole-house carbon tank. No brine tank.

That is chlorine. A whole-house carbon filter with an NSF/ANSI 42 chlorine claim is the usual match. A softener will not take chlorine out.

Shop whole-house carbon

If you are shopping a PFAS listing for the kitchen

Under-sink reverse osmosis system with a white storage tank, filter canisters, and colored tubing in a kitchen cabinet. — Under-sink reverse osmosis: filters, tank, and a second faucet.

The under-sink RO we actually run is Cloud RO — NSF/ANSI 58, kitchen tap, not a whole-house tank. Check the exact listing if PFAS is why you are shopping. Waterdrop is a tankless option if you want that path. A certifier-listed pitcher is the cheap first step. Nobody is paying for a medical claim.

Shop Cloud RO Shop Waterdrop reverse osmosis Shop PFAS-listed pitchers

Sources

Drinking Water Supply & Quality Report — NYC DEP. Accessed 2026-08-31.
2024 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report PDF — NYC DEP. Accessed 2026-08-31.

Updated August 31, 2026. A city file is chemistry we can cite plus the sewer rule. No invented detections.