Ontario · Civic arena
Kawartha Lakes drinking water hardness is 214 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#246 of 343
45% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Kawartha Lakes 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 Kawartha Lakes water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Belleville - Quinte West · vs CornwallHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Kawartha Lakes from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Kawartha Lakes.
Kawartha Lakes sits at City Score rank #246 with a standing of 45%, 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 39 places versus 2022 (#207 → #246).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #318 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #230 of 343 at 114 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #109 of 343 (11.34 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 #246 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #100
Rank #318
Rank #125
Rank #230
No placement
Rank #109
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Kawartha Lakes.
Deep conventional lock in the Jewel of the Kawarthas summer scene. Grab a cone and watch boats lock through when the season is busy.
Downtown Lindsay's main street of boutiques, cafés, and restaurants. It is the errand-and-evening spine of the city's largest community.
Bobcaygeon Lock 32 was the first lock constructed on the Trent-Severn Waterway.
Where Kawartha Lakes sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Kawartha Lakes is a single city that still feels like a map of towns, and Lindsay is the hub people mean when they say they are going into town. Tourism copy calls Lindsay the gateway: Kent Street West shops, the FLATO Academy Theatre from 1892, and the Kawartha Lakes Museum & Archives in the old Olde Gaol. The Scugog River winds through parks and paddling routes, with Ken Reid Conservation Area and McLaren's Creek Wetland just outside the core. City Hall sits on Francis Street, and summer calendars fill with the Lindsay Milk Run, Concerts in the Park, and Kawartha Farmfest drives.
The Trent-Severn Waterway is the shared spine. Five locks sit in Kawartha Lakes: Bobcaygeon Lock 32, the first lock built on the system; Lindsay Lock 33, the only three-gate lock on the waterway and minutes from downtown; Fenelon Falls Lock 34 in the so-called Jewel of the Kawarthas; Rosedale Lock 35 between Balsam and Cameron Lakes; and the Kirkfield Lift Lock with its 49-foot lift. Summer talk is lock watching, ice cream, and whether the boats are stacked at Fenelon or Bobcaygeon.
Cottage weekends and farm roads share the same municipal map. People name Lindsay for errands, Fenelon and Bobcaygeon for the water, and Farmfest for fall. Rosedale Lock 35 sits quietly between Balsam and Cameron Lakes when the bigger locks feel crowded. On OpenStats City Score for 2026, Kawartha Lakes sits at rank 45 of 125. The hometown framing stays Trent-Severn locks and Lindsay's Kent Street first.
Drawn from City of Kawartha Lakes - Trent-Severn Waterway, Explore Kawartha Lakes - Lindsay, City of Kawartha Lakes - Events.
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.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Lindsay Lock 33 is the only Trent-Severn lock with a three-gate system instead of the usual two.
Bobcaygeon Lock 32 was the first lock constructed on the Trent-Severn Waterway.
The FLATO Academy Theatre in downtown Lindsay dates to 1892.
Kawartha Farmfest is a municipal signature fall self-guided farm driving tour.
Small-town lock station minutes from downtown Lindsay and the only three-gate lock on the Trent-Severn. Locals and visitors meet here to watch boats work through.
Downtown Lindsay's main street of boutiques, cafés, and restaurants. It is the errand-and-evening spine of the city's largest community.
Deep conventional lock in the Jewel of the Kawarthas summer scene. Grab a cone and watch boats lock through when the season is busy.
Regional history museum and archives inside Lindsay's historic Olde Gaol. A solid indoor stop when the locks are rained out.
When Kawartha Lakes 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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