What's in Pilot Street water

Abita Springs, St. Tammany Parish · PWS ID LA1103193

The short answer

Pilot Street water is soft, about 0.4 grains per gallon, chlorine-disinfected groundwater. The recommendation for this water: a whole-home catalytic carbon filter, a pH neutralizer, plus optional reverse osmosis at the kitchen sink.

If the kitchen faucet smells faintly of chlorine, this page is why. Pilot Street water carries chlorine at 1.3 parts per million, and it tests soft at 6 milligrams per liter, about 0.4 grains per gallon. For perspective, some people can taste or smell chlorine at levels as low as 0.3 parts per million. The published report also shows a pH of 6.0, on the acidic side.

If the kitchen faucet smells faintly of chlorine, this page is why. 4 grains per gallon.

Why this is the recommendation

What you may notice in your waterBeneath the surfaceWhat gets your attention?

What you notice

The smell and the way showers feel

Pool-like smell when the shower gets hot
Skin that feels tight or dry afterward
Hair that feels dry or harder to manage
Water, coffee, or tea that tastes off

What happens in the plumbing

Acidic water keeps working after the meter

Low-pH water can work on copper plumbing and show up as blue-green staining around drains. A neutralizer corrects the pH before the water travels through the house.

What this report does not rule out

PFAS cannot be seen, smelled, or tasted

This report does not include a usable PFAS result. No result is not the same as no PFAS. Certified kitchen reverse osmosis reduces PFOA and PFOS in the water used for drinking and cooking.

Your water report

Your water reportPilot Street

Magnolia - Pilot Street (CSWR) · PWS ID LA1103193 · 2025 water quality report

chlorine, 1.3 ppm, about 4 times the level some people can detect · The pool taste and smellCatalytic carbon takes it out

hardness at 0.4 grains per gallon · Already soft water, with no hardness problem to treatNo softener recommended

acidic water, pH 6.0 · Blue-green stains around copper drainsA neutralizer brings it to balance

That pool taste in your coffee and morning glass is chlorine, the disinfectant this system uses. Everything here is published data for this water. The recommendation follows from it.

What we'd install

Based on the report, whole-home catalytic carbon for the chlorine at every tap. A pH neutralizer goes in ahead of it to bring the water back to balance. Reverse osmosis at the kitchen sink is optional, for drinking water and coffee. The whole-house recommendation remains the catalytic-carbon system either way.

**Reverse osmosis**Drinking water at the kitchen sink

Get my written plan and price

What this does for your home

Reduces the chlorine taste and smell in showers, coffee, tea, and cooking water
A neutralizer raises the low pH before the water reaches your copper plumbing
No unnecessary softener for water that already tests soft
Filtered drinking water from its own kitchen faucet

Cutaway of a water heater with sediment settled at the bottom

Easier on the parts that wear out

Sediment settles in your water heater and lowers its efficiency, and chlorine and chloramine embrittle the rubber seals, gaskets, and hoses inside your appliances over time. Filtering the whole house is gentler on all of it.

U.S. Dept. of Energy Energy Saver; ASTM D6284.

Source: Magnolia - Pilot Street (CSWR) annual water quality report. PWS ID LA1103193, verifiable in the EPA Safe Drinking Water database →Figures are as published by the system; see the original report for sampling methods and ranges.The published report reviewed for this page does not include a usable PFAS result, so this page does not claim that PFAS are present at this address.Get my written plan and price →

The water keeps interacting with plumbing after the meter.

Before water reaches your glass, it travels through the public distribution system, your service line, and the plumbing inside your house. These are the surfaces people never see.

Corroded supply line removed from the founder's Covington home — A corroded supply line removed from Shawn's own Covington home.

Illustration of rust and mineral accumulation inside an aging municipal water main — What decades of rust and mineral accumulation can look like inside an aging main. Photorealistic illustration.

You cannot replace every pipe between the source and your faucet. You can put a final treatment barrier where the water enters your home and at the faucet used for drinking.

Get the written plan for Pilot Street

Enter your name, phone, and email. If your address matches this report, we will email your recommendation, options, and standard installed price in minutes.

The public recordCurrently in violation

EPA lists this Magnolia Water system in violation in every one of the last twelve quarters. One item, a public-notice requirement, has been unaddressed since 2011. Older treatment-technique violations were resolved in 2022 and 2023. Its operator, Magnolia Water, is under a Louisiana Public Service Commission investigative audit of its billing and service practices, due February 2027.

EPA ECHO · LPSC Docket U-37584. Public records, current as of August 2026. They update quarterly. Operators: contact us to correct an error.

What this means at your house

Your water arrives with chlorine in it, at 1.3 parts per million. That is the disinfectant the Pilot Street system uses, and it is the taste people notice in coffee, in tea, and in the first glass of the day. For perspective, some people can taste or smell chlorine at levels as low as 0.3 parts per million. Catalytic carbon takes it out at every tap in the house.

This is soft water. Hardness tests at 6 milligrams per liter, about 0.4 grains, and for a family using around 300 gallons a day that puts roughly 5 pounds of dissolved rock through the house in a year. Genuinely hard water runs well past a hundred pounds a year, and that difference is why a softener is not in the package for this neighborhood.

The water here is groundwater, pumped from the Pilot Street well. The pH here runs acidic, at 6.0. Acidic water works on copper plumbing, which is where blue-green stains around drains come from. A neutralizer brings the pH back to balance ahead of everything else.

How the report becomes the recommendation

Each finding decides a piece of the package, including the pieces we leave out.

The report shows	At your house	The answer	Why that one
Chlorine at 1.3 ppm	The taste and smell in coffee, tea, and the first glass of the day	Whole-home catalytic carbon	Chlorine sticks to carbon on contact, and a full-size tank gives the water that contact time.
Hardness at 0.4 grains per gallon, soft	No scale problem to fix	No softener	The resin would have nothing to grab, so it stays out of the quote.
pH of 6.0, acidic	Blue-green stains around copper drains	pH neutralizer	Bringing the pH back to neutral stops the water from working on your copper.

Get the report for your exact address

Tell us your address and we will pull the report for the water system that serves it. You get our recommendation and the price in writing before any work starts, and a licensed plumber handles the install.

Get my written plan and price

Nearby in Abita Springs

← All neighborhood water reports

It cannot say what is causing dry skin at your house. Hot water, soap, weather, and the disinfectant can all contribute, and the report only establishes that the disinfectant is present.

It cannot speak for the pipes inside your own walls. Lead sampling covers a handful of homes across the whole system, and your service line, solder, and fixtures are yours alone.

It says nothing about sediment at your particular faucet; annual reports do not measure what collects in one house.

Before anything goes on a quote, we ask what you are actually noticing and test whatever the published data cannot answer.