Water Treatment
Services in
Hollywood, FL

The City bought its first small waterworks from the Hollywood Land and Water Company in 1926, then built the present plant at Hollywood Boulevard and North 35th Avenue in the 1930s to move its wells away from the crowded downtown and from salt water creeping in near the coast. EPA lists the system as City of Hollywood, ID FL4060642, serving about 147,600 people through roughly 40,200 connections.

Fresh water comes from 14 Biscayne Aquifer wells, 75 to 155 feet deep, in the Southern and Western (Chaminade) wellfields, plus raw water bought from Broward County's South Regional Wellfield at Brian Piccolo Park. Eight Floridan Aquifer wells about 1,000 to 1,300 feet deep supply salty water that only reverse osmosis can make drinkable. Inside the plant, Biscayne water runs through twelve lime-softening reactors or seven membrane-softening trains, Floridan water runs through the RO trains, and the streams meet in a blending tank. The City's plan notes that some untreated Biscayne water is blended back in as well. After that, chloramine is added to keep the water disinfected all the way to your house.

For a copy of the report or questions about water quality, the City's Water Quality Division is at 954-921-3414.

Hollywood sits in the middle of the local range. Every one of these south Broward utilities draws on the same Biscayne Aquifer, and most found PFOS above 4 ppt; Miramar was the exception in its 2023–24 samples. When Florida International University sampled tap water across three counties in 2021, its highest PFAS readings came from samples collected near the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood and Miami airports. The City hasn't published where the PFOS in its own wells comes from, so we don't guess.

The plant's lime and membrane softening steps are built to remove hardness and color, and the 2023–24 results show PFOS still getting through. Until the City announces a fix, the household option is a five-stage reverse osmosis system under the kitchen sink, which is designed to remove PFAS from the water you drink and cook with. Health agencies treat drinking and cooking as the main way PFAS in tap water reaches the body, which is why the RO goes at the kitchen sink.

Usually moderately hard, and the only way to know your number is to test it. The City doesn't publish a finished hardness figure. Raw Biscayne Aquifer water in Broward averages about 14 grains per gallon in USGS well surveys, which is where the 14–16 GPG figures you see online come from. The plant softens most of its Biscayne water with lime or membranes, mixes in RO water that has almost no minerals, and blends some unsoftened Biscayne water back in, so what reaches you is well below raw-well hardness but not soft.

One clue is strontium, a mineral that tracks calcium. In EPA's 2013–14 sampling, Hollywood's water carried 229 to 255 ppb of it, several times the 22 to 40 ppb measured in water from neighboring Davie's all-RO plant. So some hardness reaches the tap. Our test reads your hardness in grains per gallon on the spot. If it's high enough to cost you in scale and soap, we size water softener installation to that reading; if it isn't, we'll tell you to skip the softener.

The City disinfects with chloramine, chlorine bonded to ammonia, because it lasts longer in pipes than plain chlorine. The 2023 system average was 2.47 ppm. Most people notice it as a faint pool smell, stronger in the shower. Once a year the City switches to free chlorine for several weeks and flushes hydrants to clean the mains; in 2024 that ran from August 19 to September 22. During those weeks the water smells more like bleach and can run cloudy for a moment. The City says there's no health risk, but aquarium owners and home dialysis patients need to keep treating for chloramine because it returns afterward.

Ordinary carbon pitchers barely touch chloramine. Catalytic carbon, a grade made to break the chlorine-ammonia bond, does, and at the main line it also reduces the TTHM and HAA5 byproducts in every shower. That's the job of whole-house water filtration, and it protects a softener's resin, which chloramine slowly wears down.

These three come up in every online water score for Hollywood, usually without numbers. The numbers are small. EPA's 2013–14 round found chromium-6 at 0.060 to 0.064 ppb in November 2013 and none in May 2014; there is no federal limit for it, California's limit is 10 ppb, and the Environmental Working Group's health guideline is 0.02 ppb. Chlorate, a breakdown product of disinfectant chemicals, ran 193 to 249 ppb, with two of four samples above EPA's 210 ppb health reference level, which is a screening value and not a legal limit. Arsenic was 0.54 ppb in 2023, against a legal limit of 10 ppb.

None of these break a federal rule. They are also all reduced by the same under-sink RO unit that handles PFOS, so a household that installs one for PFAS gets the rest along with it.

Hollywood was laid out in the early 1920s and incorporated in 1925, and by 1960 it already had more than 12,000 single-family homes. Much of the housing in Hollywood Lakes and the original neighborhoods around downtown predates 1986, when lead solder was banned in drinking-water plumbing. The City's tap sampling has stayed low (3.5 ppb at the 90th percentile in 2024), but those samples come from a fixed set of homes and can't speak for your pipes.

The City is also inspecting water service lines at meter boxes for its federal lead inventory and will notify owners if lead is found; questions go to 954-921-3938.

About 44% of Hollywood isn't connected to City sewer, according to the City's own map, so many single-family homes run on septic tanks while the City extends sewer lines neighborhood by neighborhood. That affects how we set up a softener: we program it to regenerate only when your water use calls for it, which keeps both water and salt going to the tank to a minimum, and we check the drain route before installing. Carbon filters and RO units add very little water to a septic system.

On the other side of the housing mix are the condo towers along Hollywood Beach and the Intracoastal and the large Hillcrest condominium community. A whole-house system in a condo needs access to the unit's main line and HOA approval. Where that isn't possible, an under-sink RO unit fits in a standard kitchen cabinet and handles the PFOS and drinking-water side on its own.

A free water test takes about 20 minutes at your kitchen tap. We read hardness in grains per gallon, chloramine, iron, pH and total dissolved solids, and we go over the City's PFAS and byproduct numbers with you, since those need a certified lab rather than a field kit. Your quote is written from those readings. If the house was built before 1986, we add the free lab lead test.

Most systems go in the same day. A softener or whole-house carbon filter takes two to four hours, and a full three-stage system four to six. Afterward a softener needs salt checked monthly and the brine tank cleaned once a year, the valve serviced every five to seven years, and resin replaced at 10 to 12 years. We handle filter and RO membrane replacement on schedule and can have softener salt delivered to Hollywood ZIP codes. When you call, you reach our own local team.