Ontario · Civic arena
Essa drinking water hardness is 208 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#283 of 343
41% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Essa packs 7 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.
Rivalries on deck
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.
Full Essa water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs New Tecumseth · vs BrantfordHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Essa from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Essa.
Essa sits at City Score rank #283 with a standing of 41%, from 7 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. Dropping 68 places versus 2022 (#215 → #283).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #140 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #96 of 343 at 208 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #4 of 343 (13.74 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #283 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #114
Rank #140
Rank #269
Rank #96
No placement
Rank #4
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Essa.
Passive trails and the Utopia Grist Mill near the township's administrative heart on County Road 21.
Barrie Street park and splash pad paired with the Thornton Community Centre for the township's eastern recreation anchor.
Township offices are at 5786 County Road 21 in Utopia.
Where Essa sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Essa is a Simcoe County township you name by hamlet first. Ask someone where they live and you are more likely to hear Angus, Thornton, Utopia, Baxter, Egbert, or Ivy than a single downtown label. Municipal Visit Essa copy leans into that settlement list, placing the township a short drive from Barrie or Alliston and north of Toronto. The Administration Centre sits at 5786 County Road 21 in Utopia, which keeps civic business in the rural middle rather than in the busiest subdivision.
Recreation follows the same split geography. Angus Recreation Centre and Angus Community Park on Huron Street carry splash pad, baseball, fishing access, and trail connections. Thornton answers with the Thornton Community Centre and Thornton Arena Ball Park on Barrie Street, complete with its own splash pad and outdoor pad. Peacekeepers Park in Angus is a quieter stop: an Ontario war memorial with a Roll of Honour. Across the township, playgrounds and dog parks fill Baxter, Egbert, Ivy, and the newer Angus neighbourhoods between road construction notices.
When people want trees instead of diamonds, Utopia Conservation Area opens about 100 acres of passive trails around the historic Utopia Grist Mill, and Tiffin Conservation Area brings the Tiffin Centre Loop through wetlands, forests, and meadows inside Essa. Fire danger ratings from the Essa Fire Department still shape summer plans. The result is a township that feels like several small hometowns sharing one tax bill, stitched by county roads, arenas, and conservation loops rather than a single main street.
Drawn from Township of Essa - Play & Explore, Township of Essa - Playgrounds, Township of Essa, Township of Essa - Summer Recreation Guide.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
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.
Connectivity · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by estimated best advertised download (Mbps). Anchored to the current ISED National Broadband Data vintage, then backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber-arrival and 50/10 availability paths so relative ranks can change over the decade. Not a claim of audited historical hex maps for every year.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Construction · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by calendar-year building permit value. Direct rows sum Statistics Canada Table 34-10-0292-01. Cities without a direct reading use population × provincial per-capita permit intensity (estimated), so every seed city has a year-varying construction signal.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Composite · OpenStats
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). Growth and CSI use StatCan annual tables; permits, 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
Safety · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index (Table 35-10-0026-01). Rank 1 is highest CSI (worse). Values are CMA where a metro match exists, otherwise provincial CSI. Hometown pages label the grain.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
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
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
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
Growth · OpenStats
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
Property tax · OpenStats
OpenStats
Municipalities ranked by residential mill rate. Rank 1 is the highest rate. Published municipal years are used when available; gaps are interpolated or follow the provincial median path so the tax pillar moves year to year for every city.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
2 editions · 2017–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Visit Essa lists Angus, Baxter, Colwell, Egbert, Ivy, Thornton, and Utopia as the township's settlements.
Township offices are at 5786 County Road 21 in Utopia.
Peacekeepers Park in Angus is an Ontario war memorial with a Roll of Honour sponsored by veterans, associations, businesses, and the township.
Utopia Conservation Area covers about 100 acres of passive green space and features the historic Utopia Grist Mill.
Huron Street park with splash pad, baseball, fishing access, and trail connections beside the Angus recreation cluster.
Barrie Street park and splash pad paired with the Thornton Community Centre for the township's eastern recreation anchor.
Passive trails and the Utopia Grist Mill near the township's administrative heart on County Road 21.
Loop trails through wetlands, forests, and meadows on the Tiffin Centre system inside Essa.
When Essa 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.
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