Ontario · Civic arena
Essex drinking water hardness is 164 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#147 of 343
52% City Score XP
5/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Essex 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.
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.
Full Essex water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Bracebridge · vs Niagara-on-the-LakeHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Essex from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.
Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.
Essex sits at City Score rank #147 with a standing of 52%, 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. Dropping 64 places versus 2022 (#83 → #147).
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #33 of 327 at 156 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, Essex carries a City Score standing of 52% (rank #147 of 343) with 5 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 1 points below the Ontario peer average across 123 ranked cities. Within Ontario, Essex ranks #71 of 123 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is broadband download (ISED seed tier) (standing 90%, rank #34 of 343, raw score 1000). The weakest observed pillar is indoor radon (standing 10%, rank #33 of 327).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 164 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Essex. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #147 of 343
5/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #177
No placement
Rank #34
Rank #33
Rank #245
No placement
Essex pillar standing
Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.
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
Published residential mill-rate context for Essex.
Aquatic centres, arenas, and community halls listed on the municipal site anchor weekend life in Essex.
Historic main street blocks, local shops, and civic buildings remain the walking-tour version of Essex.
OpenStats tracks Essex across water, radon, broadband, hazards, and City Score where data is available.
Where Essex sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Essex is also the name of the largest community within the municipality.
Essex grew the familiar Canadian way: schools, rinks, churches, and a main street that still anchors weekends. Ask three locals which decade mattered most and you will get three different answers, all delivered with a grin.
Essex service economy ties to county seats, highway corridors, and regional employers that keep main street businesses busy through the year. On OpenStats City Score, Essex ranks 220 of 343. Municipal recreation, parks, trails, and utility pages remain the best live guide to how Essex 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 Essex 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 Essex. 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 Essex.
Drawn from Municipality of Essex, CBC Toronto / Ontario.
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.
Safety · OpenStats
Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to Essex 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
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
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). 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
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
Hazards · OpenStats
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
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
On OpenStats City Score, Essex ranks 220 of 343.
Essex recreation and parks programming is published on the municipal website for residents and visitors.
OpenStats tracks Essex across water, radon, broadband, hazards, and City Score where data is available.
Aquatic centres, arenas, and community halls listed on the municipal site anchor weekend life in Essex.
Historic main street blocks, local shops, and civic buildings remain the walking-tour version of Essex.
When Essex 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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