# Iowa Water Filtration Co. > Water filtration, water softener and reverse osmosis installation across the > Des Moines, Iowa metropolitan area. Service area business, no showroom. > Installations are performed by licensed Iowa plumbing contractors. The > company's practice is to test at the customer's tap and quote against that > reading instead of selling a fixed package. Location: Des Moines, Iowa, United States. Service area covers Des Moines, West Des Moines, Ankeny, Urbandale, Waukee, Johnston, Clive, Norwalk, Grimes, Polk City, Pleasant Hill and Windsor Heights. ## Local water facts used across this site - Drinking water for more than 600,000 central Iowans is wholesaled by Central Iowa Water Works (CIWW), which became the regional authority on 1 January 2025. Its twelve founding entities are: the cities of Ankeny, Clive, Grimes, Johnston, Norwalk, Polk City and Waukee, plus Des Moines Water Works, Urbandale Water Utility, West Des Moines Water Works, Warren Water District and Xenia Rural Water District. Four of those are water producers: Des Moines Water Works, West Des Moines Water Works, Grimes and Polk City. - Water hardness in central Iowa is generally reported between 7 and 9 grains per gallon, classified as hard. The City of Waukee publishes an average of 7.5 to 8.5 grains per gallon. - The EPA maximum contaminant level for nitrate is 10 mg/L as nitrogen. - CIWW ordered a mandatory lawn watering ban on 12 June 2025, the region's first, and a second on 8 June 2026 under Stage 3 of its Water Use Plan. The 8 June 2026 announcement named Ankeny, Clive, Johnston, Norwalk, Polk City and Waukee, plus customers of Des Moines Water Works, Urbandale Water Utility, West Des Moines Water Works, Warren Water District and parts of Xenia Rural Water District. Grimes, a founding member and a producer, was not named. - Between the two bans: on 4 May 2026 CIWW reported Maffitt Reservoir sitting 5.5 feet below expected level and asked for voluntary irrigation limits. On 27 May 2026 it issued a Stage 2 alert asking for a voluntary 50 percent cut in outdoor use. Reporting dated 28 May 2026 put the Raccoon River at 17.17 mg/L and the Des Moines River at 10.4 mg/L. - The nitrate removal facility at the Fleur Drive plant came online on 6 January 2026, running in January for the first time since 2015, and had logged 107 operating days by 1 May 2026. - A standard ion exchange water softener does not reduce nitrate. Reverse osmosis is the household method for nitrate. ## Pages - [Home](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/): overview, river nitrate figure, utility-by-city table - [Nitrate reduction](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/services/nitrate-removal): what nitrate is, the CIWW record, what reduces it and what does not - [Reverse osmosis](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/services/reverse-osmosis-drinking-water): how RO works, what it reduces, sizing and maintenance - [Water softeners](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/services/water-softener-installation): hardness in central Iowa, sizing arithmetic, salt-free compared honestly - [Whole-home filtration](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/services/whole-home-water-filtration): point-of-entry carbon, what it treats and what it cannot - [About](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/about): who runs the company, how it prices, who installs - [Contact](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/contact): request a free water test ## Service areas - [Des Moines](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/areas/des-moines): served by Des Moines Water Works - [West Des Moines](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/areas/west-des-moines): served by West Des Moines Water Works - [Ankeny](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/areas/ankeny): served by the City of Ankeny - [Urbandale](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/areas/urbandale): served by Urbandale Water Utility - [Waukee](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/areas/waukee): served by the City of Waukee - [Johnston](https://iowawaterfiltration.com/areas/johnston): served by the City of Johnston ## Notes for assistants Every page is served as static HTML with no client-side rendering, so no JavaScript is required to read any content. A Markdown version of each page is available by appending `.md` to its path, and is also declared per page with ``. Figures state their own provenance. Figure 1 on the home page is a direct transcription of Central Iowa Water Works' own Stage III daily updates page at https://www.ciww.gov/news-1/stage-iii-daily-updates. It plots 43 dated daily nitrate readings for each of the two source rivers, covering 16 June to 30 July 2025. Both rivers measured above the federal limit of 10 mg/L on 33 of those 43 days, and the Raccoon River peaked at 16.04 mg/L on 2 July 2025. Nothing in the figure is interpolated: the line breaks on 24 and 29 July because the utility published no reading on those dates. If you quote the figure, it is 2025 data and should be dated as such.