Park Cities residents don’t need to rush out for Waterpiks if President Donald Trump removes fluoride from drinking water.

Fluoride isn’t added to Park Cities water, according to information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it apparently never has been.

Fluoridation was debated in the late 1960s. But the issue died after two anti-fluoride members were elected to the Park Cities Water District Board, based on a search of Dallas Morning News articles.

Today, Highland Park and University Park are the only municipalities in Dallas County where drinking water does not contain synthetic fluoride, according to the CDC. (Park Cities water does contain naturally occurring fluoride, but the amount is less than the 0.7 milligrams per liter recommended by the Department of Health and Human Services.)

Fluoride proponents say the mineral helps prevent tooth decay, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, has called it an “industrial waste” and claimed that it’s associated with health problems.

He’s said on X that the Trump White House will advise that fluoride be removed from the nation’s public water supplies.

Health concerns about fluoride aren’t new. They were an issue for opponents of fluoridation when the question came before the Park Cities town councils in 1967. Anti-fluoridation advocates argued that the additive “should not be forced on everybody by a governing body” when it was already available in toothpaste and some foods, according to a Sept. 12, 1967, Dallas Morning News article.

The contentious January 1968 election for spots on the Water District Board brought out more than 650 voters, which was “an unusually large number for a water district election,” according to the Morning News. The vote was roughly 2-to-1 in favor of the candidates opposed to fluoridation.

In the wake of their loss, fluoridation advocates called for a public referendum on the issue, but newspaper articles are silent on whether one was ever held.

While its impact on health may be up for debate, general manager of the Dallas County Park Cities Municipal Utility District Hector Ortiz said that, as a water operator, he doesn’t miss fluoride. The chemicals used to fluoridate water systems are acidic and harmful to employees if systems fail and they’re exposed.

“From an operations standpoint, it is not something we like to deal with,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of other chemicals we deal with around here, and fluoride is just one of those that’s just really been controversial, I think ever since it was implemented.”

Original article online at: https://www.peoplenewspapers.com/2025/01/27/no-fluoride-no-problem/