Water Filtration & Treatment in Highland Beach

A small town with its own membrane plant

Many small South Florida towns buy water from a bigger neighbor. Highland Beach does not. The town owns and runs its own reverse osmosis water treatment plant, and its 2025 Water Quality Report says it can also take water through interconnections with Delray Beach or Boca Raton during an emergency or when the plant has to shut down for maintenance. On a normal day, the water at your tap comes from the town plant.

How the town treats Floridan Aquifer water

The town describes the raw well water as pristine but high in salinity. To remove the salt, pumps push it through membranes at more than 350 pounds per square inch. An antiscalant protects the membranes and phosphate is added as a corrosion inhibitor for the pipes.

Reverse osmosis does not remove dissolved gases, so the plant runs a degasification system and two air scrubbers. Before the water enters the mains, acid and liquid lime are added to adjust pH and add back some hardness and alkalinity, then chlorine is added for disinfection. The town says this improves taste and reduces corrosivity.

The town also says that when the plant came online, hardness dropped by about 90 percent, total trihalomethanes dropped by about 90 percent and the old yellowish tint disappeared. It adds a candid note: because the water is so pure, a slight chlorine residual may be more noticeable than it used to be.

Numbers from the 2025 Water Quality Report

• Chlorine: average 1.15 ppm, individual results 0.5 to 3.2 ppm, against a limit of 4.0.
• Fluoride: 0.023 ppm (sampled October 2023).
• Sodium: 54.0 ppm.
• Disinfection byproducts: trihalomethanes 0.49 to 0.61 ppb; haloacetic acids not detected.
• Lead and copper at homes: 90th percentile lead 3.5 ppb and copper 0.0626 ppm, with no sites over the action level.

All of these meet the standards. For a homeowner, the useful takeaways are that the chlorine level moves around through the system and that the water is low in minerals, which shapes what a filter should do.

The free chlorine detail, and the exception

Most utilities in Palm Beach County use chloramine. Highland Beach normally uses free chlorine, which matters when you buy a filter: good carbon handles free chlorine well. The exception is planned maintenance. For storage tank work from October 21 to 30, 2026, the town announced it would temporarily use chloramine instead and asked people with inline filters to check with their equipment maker. See chlorine and chloramine filters in Highland Beach.

Condos, towers and older building plumbing

Highland Beach is a narrow barrier-island town, and much of it is condominiums. In a high-rise, the water you drink passes through the building's own risers, pumps and water heaters after it leaves the town meter. A taste, odor or rust question can come from the building, not the plant. That is why a test at your own tap beats reading the town's averages. See home water testing and rust and orange stains.

Condo associations also control what you can install. An under-sink RO system fits inside your unit; a whole-home system usually needs a single-family home, a townhome with its own water line, or association approval.

What usually fits a Highland Beach home

• Condo or apartment: under-sink alkaline RO for drinking and cooking water, plus a shower filter question if chlorine smell bothers you.
• Single-family home or townhome: a whole-home city water system to take chlorine out at every tap, often paired with kitchen RO.
• Softener: rarely needed on town water; the plant already removes most hardness. See water softeners in Highland Beach.
• Restaurant, club or building with heavy equipment: a commercial softening or filtration setup only if testing shows a reason.

Every Highland Beach topic, and how to book

Systems: whole-home filtration, water softeners, under-sink RO, best drinking water system, softener vs. filter.

Problems: chlorine and chloramine, rotten-egg smell, rust stains, water spots, dry skin after showering, PFAS, fluoride, wells.

Costs: filtration, reverse osmosis, softener.

Call, text or WhatsApp Jorge at (305) 793-5974. He tests at your tap, explains the results in plain words and recommends a system only if it fits. Living Water offers financing through its financing partners; you apply with a credit application, and a co-applicant can apply with you.

Updated 2026-10-17 · Living Waters · Jorge Canela, Water Quality Specialist