Ontario · Civic arena
Essa drinking water hardness is 208 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#21 of 343
62% City Score XP
6/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Essa packs 6 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. This page uses a regional estimate — open the water atlas for method notes.
Full Essa water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Toronto · vs TillsonburgHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Essa from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.
Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.
Essa sits at City Score rank #21 with a standing of 62%, from 6 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 18 places versus 2022 (#3 → #21).
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #286 of 327 at 57 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #56 of 57 (7.11 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
In the 2025 City Score edition, Essa carries a City Score standing of 62% (rank #21 of 343) with 6 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 9 points above the Ontario peer average across 123 ranked cities. Within Ontario, Essa ranks #15 of 123 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is property tax (standing 98%, rank #56 of 57, raw score 7.1113800277392505). The weakest observed pillar is drinking-water hardness (standing 30%, rank #102 of 343).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 208 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Essa. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #21 of 343
6/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #102
No placement
Rank #145
Rank #286
Rank #198
Rank #56
Essa pillar standing
Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.
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
Published residential mill-rate context for Essa.
Passive trails and the Utopia Grist Mill near the township's administrative heart on County Road 21.
Barrie Street park and splash pad paired with the Thornton Community Centre for the township's eastern recreation anchor.
Township offices are at 5786 County Road 21 in Utopia.
Where Essa sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Essa is a Simcoe County township you name by hamlet first. Ask someone where they live and you are more likely to hear Angus, Thornton, Utopia, Baxter, Egbert, or Ivy than a single downtown label. Municipal Visit Essa copy leans into that settlement list, placing the township a short drive from Barrie or Alliston and north of Toronto. The Administration Centre sits at 5786 County Road 21 in Utopia, which keeps civic business in the rural middle rather than in the busiest subdivision.
Recreation follows the same split geography. Angus Recreation Centre and Angus Community Park on Huron Street carry splash pad, baseball, fishing access, and trail connections. Thornton answers with the Thornton Community Centre and Thornton Arena Ball Park on Barrie Street, complete with its own splash pad and outdoor pad. Peacekeepers Park in Angus is a quieter stop: an Ontario war memorial with a Roll of Honour. Across the township, playgrounds and dog parks fill Baxter, Egbert, Ivy, and the newer Angus neighbourhoods between road construction notices.
When people want trees instead of diamonds, Utopia Conservation Area opens about 100 acres of passive trails around the historic Utopia Grist Mill, and Tiffin Conservation Area brings the Tiffin Centre Loop through wetlands, forests, and meadows inside Essa. Fire danger ratings from the Essa Fire Department still shape summer plans. The result is a township that feels like several small hometowns sharing one tax bill, stitched by county roads, arenas, and conservation loops rather than a single main street.
Drawn from Township of Essa - Play & Explore, Township of Essa - Playgrounds, Township of Essa, Township of Essa - Summer Recreation Guide.
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.
Safety · OpenStats
Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to Essa 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
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
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). 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
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 (education levies are shown on property-tax pages but not added here). Rank 1 is the highest rate. Atlas seed and published municipal rows anchor the panel; off-panel tax years (e.g. 2026) carry across 2016–2025; remaining gaps follow provincial paths.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Hazards · OpenStats
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
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
2 editions · 2017–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Visit Essa lists Angus, Baxter, Colwell, Egbert, Ivy, Thornton, and Utopia as the township's settlements.
Township offices are at 5786 County Road 21 in Utopia.
Peacekeepers Park in Angus is an Ontario war memorial with a Roll of Honour sponsored by veterans, associations, businesses, and the township.
Utopia Conservation Area covers about 100 acres of passive green space and features the historic Utopia Grist Mill.
Huron Street park with splash pad, baseball, fishing access, and trail connections beside the Angus recreation cluster.
Barrie Street park and splash pad paired with the Thornton Community Centre for the township's eastern recreation anchor.
Passive trails and the Utopia Grist Mill near the township's administrative heart on County Road 21.
Loop trails through wetlands, forests, and meadows on the Tiffin Centre system inside Essa.
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