Water treatment & plumbing in Dewey-Humboldt, AZ

What the water is like here

A Superfund town where testing is not optional

The Iron King Mine – Humboldt Smelter Superfund site takes up roughly 153 acres of old mine west of State Route 69 and about 182 acres of old smelter east of it — both inside Dewey-Humboldt. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality lists arsenic, lead and other heavy metals in the site’s soil and groundwater, and in January 2025 EPA formally added manganese to that list. EPA signed its $85 million cleanup plan in October 2023 and is now working out the engineering.

ADEQ’s advice to anyone with a private well near the contamination is simple: test it. That is the single most important thing a homeowner here can do. When the state health department looked at well samples taken near the site in 2004–2006, it rated two drinking-water wells a Public Health Hazard for arsenic — the higher at 50 µg/L, five times the federal limit. (A microgram per liter, µg/L, is the same as a part per billion, ppb.) Its advice to every household in Dewey-Humboldt on a private well: test every year for bacteria and nitrate, and at least once for metals such as arsenic, copper and lead (ADHS health consultation, 2009). Arsenic and lead have no taste, no smell and no color; a certified lab panel is the only way to know what your well is producing.

On top of the site-specific question, Dewey-Humboldt shares the county’s baseline problem. A peer-reviewed analysis of 33,099 Arizona water samples found 43.6% of Yavapai County samples above the EPA’s 10 ppb arsenic limit — the second-highest rate of any county in the state. Local wells also run hard: in our own field testing, commonly 22 to 32+ grains per gallon, which is what shortens water heaters and scales fixtures out here.

Nothing gets recommended for a Dewey-Humboldt home until a test comes back. The $185 Premium Water Test is a certified lab panel covering 53 parameters including arsenic, lead, manganese and bacteria, and every system recommended here is sized from those numbers. For a well close to the old mine or smelter, SimpleLab’s Level 2 + Bacteria panel adds a much wider metals sweep — the testing page explains which to order.

The published numbers for Dewey-Humboldt

Every figure above is reproduced from the linked report. The agencies’ findings are about the site and the wells they sampled; whether your own well is affected is a question only a test at your tap answers.

What we do in Dewey-Humboldt

Also bookable now:

• Reverse osmosis systems: under the sink, the Kitten, $829, or the Ocelot, $999. It reduces arsenic V and lead in the water you drink and cook with (not certified; a test of the RO water shows your result). On a well, the water must be inside its limits (iron up to 0.3 ppm, manganese up to 0.1 ppm, arsenic V up to 300 ppb), and the job must need no permit. If a granite, quartz or stainless counter needs a new faucet hole, the Ocelot goes over $1,000 and waits for the licenses.
• The $185 Premium Water Test, which you order from SimpleLab and we read with you free.
• Plumbing & water heaters: a tank flush at $79 is worth doing every year on water this hard; anode rod $245; leaks and fixtures at the flat rates on the pricing page. Drain clearing covers branch drains up to 2-inch and 75 feet; main-line cabling, sewer camera and hydro jetting are not offered yet.

Every job carries the two-year workmanship warranty plus the maker’s or the supplier’s warranty on the parts.