Slave Lake, Alberta
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Alberta · Civic arena

Slave Lake

Slave Lake drinking water hardness is 201 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.

Civic arena · hometown HUD

Slave Lake

Town6,836 pop
54XP
#96

#96 of 343

54% City Score XP

Rising
City Score XP

5/8 pillars on the board

54%#96

Decade trail

Slave 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.

Slave 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
201 mg/L
very hard
pH
7.9
Lead
0.1 μg/L

Full Slave Lake water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Taber · vs EdmontonHardness guide

Watershed to tap · system map

How Slave Lake's water works

Source, treatment, and distribution for Slave 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 Slave Lake

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

How Slave Lake scores

Rising+166

Slave Lake sits at City Score rank #96 with a standing of 54%, 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 166 places versus 2022 (#262 → #96).

Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #148 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.

On the latest OpenStats pass, Slave Lake carries a City Score standing of 54% (rank #96 of 343) with 5 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 5 points above the Alberta peer average across 51 ranked cities. Within Alberta, Slave Lake ranks #12 of 51 on City Score.

The strongest signal in the current chart is seismic hazard (standing 89%, rank #304 of 343, raw score 0.024). The weakest observed pillar is broadband download (ISED seed tier) (standing 11%, rank #306 of 343).

Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 201 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Slave Lake. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.

#96
Arena rank (of 343)
54%
City Score
5
Pillars observed
Rising+166
vs 2022
#262 → #96

Arena loadout

Topic XP bars

Arena rank #96 of 343

City Score

5/8 pillars · main XP bar

54%#96
Drinking water

Pillar avg · hardness #114

55%
Building permits

No placement

—
Internet

Rank #306

11%
Radon

Rank #148

45%
Hazards

Rank #304

89%
Property tax

No placement

—

Slave 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 +166

In the news

Data desk

Hometown notes

City profile

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

Slave Lake in brief

Slave Lake lands on the Alberta map as a place people still call home. 1965 is the year locals still cite when the townsite got serious.

Trading posts and early forts left fingerprints on street names and museum displays. Festivals and street names carry pieces of that plotline into the present.

Agriculture, forestry, tourism, and public-sector jobs still mix on the local tax roll the way many Alberta towns do. On OpenStats City Score, Slave Lake ranks 65 of 343. Municipal recreation, parks, trails, and utility pages remain the best live guide to how Slave 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 Slave 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 Slave 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 Slave Lake.

Drawn from Municipality of Slave 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 Slave 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 Slave 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

#306
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 95.2

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

#96
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.545

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

#114
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 201

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

#148
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

#49
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.025590826457838063

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

#304
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.024

Worth knowing in Slave Lake

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

Places to see

Slave Lake downtown

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

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