Quebec · Civic arena
Alma drinking water hardness is 168 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#240 of 343
46% City Score XP
5/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Alma 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.
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 Alma water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Sept-Îles · vs Sainte-MarieHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Alma 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.
Alma sits at City Score rank #240 with a standing of 46%, 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. Dropping 18 places versus 2022 (#222 → #240).
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #248 of 327 at 71 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.
In the 2025 City Score edition, Alma carries a City Score standing of 46% (rank #240 of 343) with 5 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 1 points below the Quebec peer average across 34 ranked cities. Within Quebec, Alma ranks #20 of 34 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is indoor radon (standing 76%, rank #248 of 327, raw score 70.9). The weakest observed pillar is seismic hazard (standing 4%, rank #14 of 343).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 168 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Alma. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #240 of 343
5/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #170
No placement
Rank #158
Rank #248
Rank #14
No placement
Alma 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 Alma.
Trail hub inside Parc d'une rive à l'autre with ridges that open toward the rivière Saguenay. Locals treat it as year-round ground
Municipal tourism stop that tells Alma's builder story without sending visitors to a generic museum brochure.
Parc d'une rive à l'autre links Centre plein air Dorval, Centre Mont Villa Saguenay, and Pointe des Américains.
Where Alma sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Alma sits where Lac-Saint-Jean water turns into working rivers, and locals talk about the town as territoire almatois rather than a generic lake stop. The Grande Décharge and Petite Décharge cut through daily geography the way other cities talk about ring roads. Trails at Pointe des Américains follow both channels, while Centre Mont Villa Saguenay looks down on the Petite Décharge from ski slopes that still feel downtown-close. Route 169 and the pont Carcajou keep the centre-ville tied to the rest of the Lac-Saint-Jean circuit, which is why bridge work always lands on the supper-table news.
Outdoor life is not a side dish here. Parc d'une rive à l'autre gathers Centre plein air Dorval, Mont Villa Saguenay, and Pointe des Américains into one recreation story, with Dorval ridges opening toward the rivière Saguenay on clear days. In warmer months, the Véloroute des Bleuets rolls through town and keeps bike culture in the same sentence as blueberries farther west on the lake. Families also point visitors to Centre de villégiature Dam-en-Terre, Odyssée des Bâtisseurs, and Chapelle Sainte-Anne when someone asks what to do beyond the grocery run. Quoi faire à Alma is literally how the city titles that calendar hunt.
Civic identity mixes hydro and culture without apology. Hydroélectricité sits on the municipal menu because Alma runs its own electric service, and Alma Spectacles plus Festivalma keep evenings loud enough for a regional centre. Put together, it is a Lac-Saint-Jean city that measures itself by riverbanks, trail heads, and a centre-ville that still matters when the highway slows. If you can name the Décharges and Dorval in one breath, you are already speaking Alma.
Drawn from Ville d'Alma - Découvrir Alma, Ville d'Alma, Destination Lac-Saint-Jean, Le Quotidien.
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 Alma 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
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.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Municipal copy frames the catchment as territoire almatois, not just a pin on Lac-Saint-Jean.
Parc d'une rive à l'autre links Centre plein air Dorval, Centre Mont Villa Saguenay, and Pointe des Américains.
Alma lists the Véloroute des Bleuets among its tourism staples.
Hydroélectricité is a named municipal service, not only a regional talking point.
Trail hub inside Parc d'une rive à l'autre with ridges that open toward the rivière Saguenay. Locals treat it as year-round ground for hiking, fatbike, and ski.
Linear trails between Grande Décharge and Petite Décharge that put river water inside the city limits. A short walk from Mont Villa Saguenay.
Municipal tourism stop that tells Alma's builder story without sending visitors to a generic museum brochure.
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