Cold Lake, Alberta
Wikimedia Commons via Wikipedia

Alberta · Civic arena

Cold Lake

Cold Lake drinking water hardness is 226 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.

Civic arena · hometown HUD

Cold Lake

City16k pop
48XP
#208

#208 of 343

48% City Score XP

RisingSurface
City Score XP

5/8 pillars on the board

48%#208

Decade trail

Cold Lake packs 5 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.

Cold Lake drinking water

Regional estimate from nearest municipal sample

Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas. This page uses a regional estimate — open the water atlas for method notes.

Hardness
226 mg/L
very hard
pH
7.4
Lead
0.2 μg/L

Full Cold Lake water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Banff · vs Rocky Mountain HouseHardness guide

Watershed to tap · system map

How Cold Lake's water works

Source, treatment, and distribution for Cold Lake from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.

Local numbers for Cold Lake

Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.

How Cold Lake scores

Rising+11

Cold Lake sits at City Score rank #208 with a standing of 48%, from 5 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. Rising 11 places versus 2022 (#219 → #208).

Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #142 of 327 at 105 Bq/m³ survey mean. Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.

Among Canadian cities on the hub, Cold Lake carries a City Score standing of 48% (rank #208 of 343) with 5 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 2 points below the Alberta peer average across 51 ranked cities. Within Alberta, Cold Lake ranks #33 of 51 on City Score.

The strongest signal in the current chart is seismic hazard (standing 94%, rank #324 of 343, raw score 0.016). The weakest observed pillar is drinking-water hardness (standing 21%, rank #72 of 343).

Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 226 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Cold Lake. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.

#208
Arena rank (of 343)
48%
City Score
5
Pillars observed
Rising+11
vs 2022
#219 → #208

Arena loadout

Topic XP bars

Arena rank #208 of 343

City Score

5/8 pillars · main XP bar

48%#208
Drinking water

Pillar avg · hardness #72

42%
Building permits

No placement

—
Internet

Rank #249

28%
Radon

Rank #142

43%
Hazards

Rank #324

94%
Property tax

No placement

—

Cold Lake pillar standing

Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.

TaxPermitsNetRadonWaterHazardsGrowthCrime

Source: OpenStats composite / study editions

City Score standing trend

Standing percentage by panel year (higher is better).

Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

Source: OpenStats composite timeseries

Achievements

Rising +11Surface water supply

Hometown notes

City profile

Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.

Cold Lake in brief

Cold Lake lands on the Alberta map as a place people still call home. The name traces to the lake nearby.

Fort days still show up in heritage walks and local school projects. Walk the older blocks and you can still spot seams between eras.

Cold Lake service economy ties to county seats, highway corridors, and regional employers that keep main street businesses busy through the year. On OpenStats City Score, Cold Lake ranks 248 of 343. Municipal recreation, parks, trails, and utility pages remain the best live guide to how Cold Lake explains itself today.

Permits, mill rates, broadband, radon, hazards, and water quality may show measured values, regional estimates, or empty states until a verified source is linked. That is the same honest pattern OpenStats uses for smaller places already in the corpus, and it keeps Cold Lake comparable on the hometown board without inventing numbers. Seasonal recreation programming, winter maintenance, and summer festival calendars still fill the municipal news feed most years. Library branches, arena ice, and aquatics schedules are the practical anchors families check before planning a weekend in Cold Lake. Seasonal recreation programming, winter maintenance, and summer festival calendars still fill the municipal news feed most years. Library branches, arena ice, and aquatics schedules are the practical anchors families check before planning a weekend in Cold Lake.

Drawn from Municipality of Cold Lake, CBC Calgary / Edmonton.

City Score over time

City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.

0%25%50%75%100%2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
OpenStats City Score

Rankings for Cold Lake

Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.

Safety · OpenStats

Crime severity not placed

Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to Cold Lake without copying a province, CMA, or another city. The safety pillar scores at median standing (50%) on City Score, the same rule used for other missing pillars.

Connectivity · OpenStats

OpenStats Broadband Download Speeds

OpenStats

Cities ranked by household-weighted maximum advertised download (Mbps) from ISED National Broadband Data hex ISP rows, with hex-to-city assignment by population-weighted gravity. The headline 2025 score is the dwelling-weighted mean of per-hex technology ceilings (fibre and cable at 1 Gbps, DSL lower). Household-weighted 50/10 availability (%) is stored on atlas rows as avail_5010_pct. Earlier panel years backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber and availability paths.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#249
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 190.4

Composite · OpenStats

OpenStats City Score

OpenStats

Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016-2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0-1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Crime severity uses StatCan police-service CSI only (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01); cities without a police-service match take median standing on the safety pillar. Growth uses StatCan CSD estimates; construction uses verified municipal building-permit value per resident (population field on each city record, 2021 Census vintage); mill rates and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#208
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.48

Water · OpenStats

OpenStats Drinking Water Hardness

OpenStats

Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#72
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 226

Health · OpenStats

OpenStats Highest Indoor Radon

OpenStats

Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#142
Latest · 2025 · of 327
Score 104.8

Growth · OpenStats

OpenStats Population Growth

OpenStats

Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#254
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.003608886883951731

Hazards · OpenStats

OpenStats Seismic Hazard (PGA)

OpenStats

Communities ranked by NRCan peak ground acceleration (higher = stronger shaking hazard). Rank 1 is highest PGA. The seismic model is multi-year; values are carried across the City Score panel and flagged as static until NRCan publishes a new generation.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#324
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.016

Worth knowing in Cold Lake

Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.

Places to see

Cold Lake downtown

Historic main street blocks, local shops, and civic buildings remain the walking-tour version of Cold Lake.

Follow Cold Lake by email

When Cold Lake moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.

No spam. Unsubscribe with one reply.

Related guides

More places in Alberta

All Alberta cities