Portland, Maine
Portland Water District 2024 Annual Water Quality Report. Hardness 7.7 mg/L as CaCO3. Chloramines used after ozone and UV. No Measure S-style residential softener ban turned up.
- Hardness7.7 mg/L as CaCO3
- Chloramineadded after ozone/UV
Best match for Portland
Whole-house catalytic carbon for chloramine
No district prohibition on a brine drain turned up in the current file.
Catalytic carbon with a chloramine claim (NSF/ANSI 42 for chloramine). Regular chlorine carbon is the wrong box.
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Other options that still fit
Do not buy a softener on this supply
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.
Under-sink reverse osmosis
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. Shop Amazon first for under-sink RO, or buy Cloud direct. 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 under-sink reverse osmosisBuy Cloud RO directShop Waterdrop reverse osmosisShop PFAS-listed pitchers
On the report
- Water utility
- Portland Water District
- Hardness
- Hardness 7.7 mg/L as CaCO3. Maine recommended limit printed as 150. Natural mineral. — Portland Water District 2024 Annual Water Quality Report
- Disinfectant
- Narrative: ozonation and ultraviolet light treatment; a small dose of chloramines is added. Also lists sodium hypochlorite (chlorine) for disinfection. Chloramine is in play. A distribution residual number was not cleanly printed on the hardness page — this file does not invent one. — Portland Water District 2024 Annual Water Quality Report
- Brine / salt to the sewer
- No district prohibition found in current research. Searched city water and sewer pages for a residential self-regenerating softener or brine-drain ban like LACSD Measure S. None turned up. Ask the sewer agency on the bill before you cut a brine drain.
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
Portland, Maine drinking water on this file is Portland Water District — not Portland, Oregon. Searched city water and sewer pages for a residential self-regenerating softener or brine-drain ban like LACSD Measure S. None turned up. Ask the sewer agency on the bill before you cut a brine drain. This is not a legal opinion.
The 2024 report prints hardness 7.7 mg/L as CaCO3. Narrative: ozone, UV, then chloramines. Kitchen shopping stays the Cloud RO / Waterdrop path already used on other cities if a listing is why you are looking.
Sources
- 2024 Annual Water Quality Report — Portland Water District. Accessed 2026-09-11.
Updated September 11, 2026. A city file is chemistry we can cite plus the sewer rule. No invented detections.