Pukalani Water Quality Test

Water quality in Lahaina is still toxic, and residents of Kula are still worried about the water. Living in Pukalani, and having watched the fires come too close to our home, we’ve been paying extra attention to our water. With an increased chlorine taste, we decided to run a professional commercial test of our tap water in Pukalani and share the results below.

This test was completed directly from the kitchen faucet without filters on September 5th, 2023.

The results below share all the analytes found out of 109 tested. 6 exceed health-related benchmarks, and 2 exceed a plumbing-related benchmark (our home is around 20 years old.) A few interesting comparisons of our water to bottled water averages:

Chloroform 637%+ (disinfectant byproduct)
Bromodichloromethane 597%+ (disinfectant byproduct)
Dibromochloromethane 377%+ (disinfectant byproduct)
Bromoform 6.98%+ (disinfectant byproduct)

The following shares the health impacts these contaminants can have with long-term exposure.

And here are the contaminants detected in our water with more information on EPA classification, toxicity found in animals, DNA changes, and more.

Chlorine Test

We also ran a chlorine test, even though the taste wasn’t as bad as it is at times.

Free Chlorine: Leftover chlorine is still capable of killing bacteria. Ours came in at 1 PPM (my/L), which means the water will remain bacteria-free, even if new bacteria are introduced. Good for not getting sick from the water, but bad for our gut.

Combined (Total) Chlorine: Chlorine that has reacted with other molecules and can no longer kill bacteria. Combined chlorine may include chloramine and/or trihalomethanes. Ours came in at 2 PPM (mg/L), which means the water may develop an unpleasant, bleach-like taste and odor and has quite a bit of nasty chemicals we don’t want to ingest.

Conclusion

So how do we feel about it? I guess better than we expected, but it is concerning. We always drink using filters, but we don’t use a whole-house filter, so showering, hand washing, dishwashing, and more are done without filters.

We’d love your comments on your own tests in Pukalani. Should we do another test once our water is filtered? Let us know!