Alberta · Civic arena
Fort McMurray drinking water hardness is 162 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#94 of 343
56% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Fort McMurray 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 Fort McMurray water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Medicine Hat · vs Drayton ValleyHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Fort McMurray from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Fort McMurray.
Fort McMurray sits at City Score rank #94 with a standing of 56%, 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. Rising 100 places versus 2022 (#194 → #94).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #247 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #160 of 343 at 162 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #301 of 343 (7.67 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 #94 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #200
Rank #247
Rank #28
Rank #160
No placement
Rank #301
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Fort McMurray.
The commercial core targeted by downtown revitalization incentives for upgrades and mixed-use work. Franklin Avenue keeps the civic offices
The recreation and culture campus where programming and public art share the same address. The Kirschner Family Community Art Gallery gives
Municipal pages still frame Fort McMurray as the urban hub of Wood Buffalo, not a standalone prairie city adrift from its region.
Where Fort McMurray sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Fort McMurray sits where the Athabasca River meets the Clearwater River, the urban hub of Wood Buffalo in northern Alberta. People here lean on RMWB shorthand the way other towns lean on a city hall nickname, and construction notices still split projects North of Bridge or South of Bridge. Oilsands work sets the economic weather for households and downtown storefronts alike. River Breakup season sets another kind of calendar, when municipal updates shift from winter operations to ice-out and flood watch.
Downtown Fort McMurray keeps drawing civic attention through revitalization incentives aimed at commercial and mixed-use upgrades, while the Lower Townsite stays tied to Keyano College and the recreation work nearby. Franklin Avenue carries the civic address strip. The Snye Waterway gets its annual weed harvest. Abasand shows up on the parks map with an outdoor rink, perimeter trail, and OHV staging. Rural communities such as Janvier sit on the same Wood Buffalo map even when the daily desk is covering the urban core.
Recreation runs deep for a northern industrial town. Birchwood Trails stretch across a long maintained network, and MacDonald Island Park anchors culture programming, including the Kirschner Family Community Art Gallery. WinterPLAY and Canada Day are the civic party nights people plan around. Jubilee Gallery keeps public art in the Jubilee Building lobby. Fort McMurray Today's mix of energy, utilities, sports, and street-level crime coverage is the soundtrack: a river confluence town that also happens to be the oilsands capital of the region.
Drawn from Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Fort McMurray Today, Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
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
The Globe and Mail
2023 data partnership with Environics Analytics ranking 439 Canadian communities on ten livability categories.
Single edition · 2023
Only one published edition places Fort McMurray in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Project notices routinely sort Fort McMurray construction as North of Bridge or South of Bridge, a local compass that sticks after one winter of driving it.
River Breakup is a named municipal update category, which tells you spring ice-out is civic business here, not just scenery.
Birchwood Trails are billed as a 135-km maintained trail system, long enough that “going for a walk” can mean a half-day plan.
Pulse is the branded RMWB inquiry line residents hit when a dig, a flood notice, or a facility change needs a straight answer.
A sprawling maintained trail network woven through the urban Wood Buffalo landscape. Locals treat it as everyday recreation infrastructure, not a tourist sidebar.
The recreation and culture campus where programming and public art share the same address. The Kirschner Family Community Art Gallery gives the island a gallery stop beyond the rinks and fields.
The commercial core targeted by downtown revitalization incentives for upgrades and mixed-use work. Franklin Avenue keeps the civic offices in the same conversation as the storefronts.
A working waterway on the municipal maintenance calendar, including the annual weed harvest. It is part of how the town keeps its river system usable, not just photogenic.
When Fort McMurray 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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