Whole House Water Softeners in Lake Highlands

Dallas water comes in two families, and Lake Highlands could be on either. The city's December 2023 memorandum explains that the East Side plant, in Sunnyvale, draws on lakes Ray Hubbard, Tawakoni and Fork, while the Elm Fork and Bachman plants take Ray Roberts, Lewisville and Grapevine water by way of the Elm Fork of the Trinity. East Side is the largest of the three. It was constructed in 1962 as a 100 million gallon a day plant, grew through the 1970s and 1980s to 440 million gallons a day, and added ozone to its treatment in 2004; its raw water rights are 80 million gallons a day from Ray Hubbard, 170 from Tawakoni and 107 from Fork. Lake Ray Hubbard is Dallas's own, a dam on the East Fork of the Trinity just north of Forney, and a 2015 survey measured it at 20,947 acres and 439,559 acre-feet at the top of the conservation pool. The lake in the neighborhood's name belongs to neither family: the Handbook of Texas describes White Rock Lake as supplying a small part of Dallas's needs, but that description is older than the 2025 report's list of seven sources, which does not include it. Dallas's own documents put a few pieces of hardware near the neighborhood. The 1999 water quality report lists rehabilitation of the Plano Road elevated tank among that year's projects, and the 2014 East Side presentation names, beside the Jim Miller and Lake June pump stations, the pressure planes Central Low, Pleasant Grove Intermediate, Beltwood and East High, without a map of where each begins and ends. The lake the neighborhood grew up beside has a history of its own after its supply years: the Dallas Park Board began turning its shores into a municipal park in the early 1930s with Civilian Conservation Corps labor, and in 1943 barracks at Winfrey Point housed German prisoners of war.

Whichever plant is feeding the neighborhood, the number to work from is the City of Dallas's: 120 to 155 mg/L as calcium carbonate in the Dallas memorandum. In grains that is 7 at the low end and 9 at the high end, and in the USGS bands the whole range above 120 is hard water. Dallas does not report the two families separately. Its 2025 water quality report gives a single set of results for all three plants and carries no hardness row, so there is no published figure that says East Side water is harder or softer than Elm Fork water in a given month. The utility's 2014 presentation shows East Side's finished water leaving for the Jim Miller and Lake June pump stations, but it does not draw the line that tells you which plant reaches a particular street in Lake Highlands, and the city's pressure-zone map is not part of the public water quality report, so the plant question stays open for this neighborhood.

At the tap that leaves one honest statement: a Lake Highlands home is on Dallas water that runs moderately hard to hard, and the figure at the faucet moves with the lake mix and the season. Both plant families are reservoir water, and both arrive with the calcium and magnesium that leave spots on glass and scale in a water heater. Size a softener for 9 grains, the top of Dallas's range, so the months when the blend runs hard do not catch it short, and let the free water test replace the citywide range with the number at your address.

Sources: City of Dallas memorandum, December 1, 2023 · Dallas Water Utilities, East Side Water Treatment Plant expansion presentation, December 4, 2014 · Texas Water Development Board, Lake Ray Hubbard · Handbook of Texas: White Rock Lake · City of Dallas 2025 Water Quality Report · City of Dallas 1999 Water Quality Report