Transport Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2017

[Prof. Graham Gagnon]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay.

It's 4:26 p.m., and we're going to shift to our next witnesses.

Thank you all very much for your information. I think you've given the committee a lot to think about.

We will suspend for a few minutes so that we can get our video conference set up and excuse our witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm calling our meeting back to order.

For our second panel we have Carl Yates, the general manager for Halifax Water, and Reid Campbell, director of water services.

By video conference we have Marc Edwards, professor, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia. It's your Thanksgiving over there, and we thank you very much for taking time to join us for this important issue today.

We also have Bruce Lanphear, professor, Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University.

Thank you to all of you who are here.

Mr. Edwards, since it's Thanksgiving and I'm sure you want to get back to your family, how about if we start with you?

Let's open the floor for five minutes. If I have to, so the committee can get their questions in, I'll interrupt you.

Mr. Edwards, please go ahead.

[Dr. Marc Edwards, Professor, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, As an Individual]

Thank you for having me.

In the U.S. we're currently in the midst of a paradigm shift in how we're thinking about our water infrastructure. There are three main reasons for that.

First, we're trying to deal with the legacy of these lead pipes. If you ever read a book called The Great Lead Water Pipe Disaster , you'll realize that these pipes were installed as a result of government laws to connect your house to the service line, and once they became almost the only government-owned source of lead affecting a product intended for human consumption, it created a conflict of interest and put our water utilities at odds with their customers' interests.

We saw many manifestations of this problem in the United States, including some horrible water-borne disease outbreaks from elevated blood lead in Washington, D.C., and in Flint and other parts of the country. It has undermined trust in drinking water in the United States to an almost unprecedented level. Last year, for example, bottled water sales exceeded soda sales. As I toured the country, I could see that many people had decided they would not be drinking tap water, again because of some of the fallout and distrust from Flint.

The second problem we're dealing with is our aging infrastructure. Of course, these pipes are out of sight, out of mind, and this is a trillion-dollar problem. We used to think that these old leaking pipes were just that. They would leak; we'd fix them on failure, and maybe they would rust and cause discolouration or aesthetic concerns for our water.

However, the more we looked at it, the more we learned. We're realizing links to water-borne disease. This new class of disease-causing bacteria that live in our plumbing we've discovered only in the last several decades. We realized that these old pipes encourage the growth of these dangerous bacteria. They're called “opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens”, and the best-known example is Legionella.

Third, we're having a paradigm shift in the States because we're asking more of our water infrastructure. As we try to improve our water and energy conservation, we're using less and less water. Unfortunately, what that means for lead, Legionella, and these other problems is that all those problems get worse. Unlike roads, which degrade more slowly if you use them less, the main mechanism of water system failure is anaerobic corrosion. In other words, the less you use the pipes, the more rapidly they'll degrade. As we install these water conservation measures around the country, the water that used to clean our pipes, extend their longevity, and reduce the amount of bacteria and lead in the water is being lost. As a result, in many cities in the United States—and based on some anecdotal evidence, in Canada—we're also seeing higher levels of lead and also higher levels of these dangerous bacteria in homes that use less water.

All of these things are forcing us to reconsider this issue, and I'm glad Canada is taking a look at this situation.

Thank you for having me here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lanphear, would you like to go ahead for five minutes, please?

[Dr. Bruce Lanphear, Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Yes, thank you.

First I would like to applaud your efforts, and Health Canada's efforts, to update the guidance on lead and to modernize the water service lines in Canada to protect Canadians. Protecting the health of Canadians is to a large extent about ensuring that the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the food we eat are clean and healthy.

My research over the past 25 years has been primarily focused on protecting children from lead poisoning, and I'll focus my comments today on lead toxicity for the most part.

My early studies quantified the various sources of lead that contribute to children developing lead poisoning, including paint, house dust, soil, and water. We found that water is one of the most important sources of lead for children, pregnant women, and the rest of us.

We found that at high levels of exposure, lead damages the prefrontal cortex—that's the part of the brain that makes us most distinctly human—and elevates the risk that children will develop anti-social behaviours such as delinquency, and even criminal behaviours. We also found that children who were exposed to high levels of lead were at increased risk for developing other types of behavioural problems, such as ADHD. In fact, we found that about one in five cases of ADHD, or 600,000 cases in the United States, were due to lead exposure.

Low-level lead exposure in pregnant women has also been linked to children being born too small and too soon.

Finally, we found that lead is toxic at the lowest levels of exposure. The World Health Organization has concluded that there is no safe level of lead in children's blood.

Although we focus primarily on the impact on children's health, lead is an established risk factor for hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and essential tremors in adults. It is also suspected, but not proven, to increase the risk of death from ischemic heart disease—that's when your heart suffocates over many years from lack of oxygen—and dementia.

While we've made progress in reducing lead in our environment, water pipes and fountains remain an important source of lead for many Canadians, especially for smaller communities and first nation communities.

Currently Health Canada relies on a guidance of 10 parts per billion of lead in water. That's the equivalent of about 10 tablespoons in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. I concur with Health Canada's conclusion that 10 parts per billion is no longer protective. Children who live in homes with water lead levels above five parts per billion have, on average, a one-microgram-per-decilitre increase of blood lead, which is estimated to reduce their intellectual ability by about one to one and a half IQ points. Women who live in homes with water lead levels above five parts per billion have about a 30% increase in blood lead levels.

As Health Canada has said, the maximum acceptable concentration of lead in water should be reduced to five parts per billion, and over the next 10 or 20 years steps should be taken to reduce it even further.

I'd like to stop there and be available for questions later.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to Halifax Water.

[Carl Yates, General Manager, Halifax Water]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Carl Yates. I'm general manager of Halifax Water.

Halifax Water is the water, waste-water, and stormwater utility serving 360,000 people in the greater Halifax area. I am accompanied by Reid Campbell, our director of water services, who has been leading much of our work on lead in drinking water for the past several years.

We want to thank the committee for the invitation to appear here today and for taking the time to look into this issue, which we believe needs more attention by water utilities and their provincial regulators across Canada. The issue of lead in drinking water is manageable, but a regulatory framework is needed to enable utilities to develop approaches to address the unique circumstances in their community.

We believe that lead in drinking water is a more serious issue than many utilities in Canada and their provincial regulators understand. Current regulations do not provide adequate public health protection and do not require utilities to truly investigate and understand the occurrence of lead in their systems.

Halifax Water has had programs to remove lead service lines since the 1970s. At one point, we may have had as many as 15,000 lead service lines, and today we have as few as 2,000 lead service lines remaining in the public system. We have provided corrosion control treatment since 2002 and have always provided free in-home sampling for customers concerned about lead. For any customer who requested it, we would replace the public lead service line once they replaced the private property portion.

Around 2010, as you've already heard, through our research partnership and the industrial research chair at Dalhousie University, we encouraged Dr. Graham Gagnon to look into the occurrence of lead in our system. Dr. Gagnon's work gave us new insights into the occurrence of lead in our system and directed us to enhance our approach to managing lead. We discovered that to properly address lead, we needed to completely remove lead service lines and stop doing partial replacements. We also needed to increase our level of corrosion control and to treat each customer with a lead service line as a customer who needs assistance.

This created quite a challenge, considering that the customer owns a portion of the line, the constraints on utilities getting involved in private property issues, and the barriers to customers renewing lead service lines, including costs.

In January 2017, the American Water Works Association, AWWA, adopted a new policy on lead service line management. While AWWA is based in the United States, most Canadian utilities are members, and AWWA is considered the authoritative technical resource relied on by utilities across North America. The new policy calls on utilities to undertake complete removal of lead services lines in a reasonable period of time and to provide corrosion control treatment. Most importantly, it calls on utilities to work in partnership with their customers to achieve removal of lead from the distribution system by developing locally appropriate solutions. It is our belief that the best way for utilities to protect their customers from lead is to follow the guidance of the AWWA policy. This also includes initiatives like creating an inventory of lead service lines, communicating with customers, and providing the sampling that they require.

We believe the role of government in this issue is to provide a framework to support utilities in this approach. The occurrence of lead in any given system is much more complex and locally variable than are traditional drinking water parameters, such as bacteria and arsenic. Simply creating a compliance level and requiring utilities to meet it will not improve public health outcomes. Our experience is that a high lead level in a home requires both the utility and the customer to take action together to address the lead service line that they jointly own.

Government has a role to assist homeowners and utilities with the many barriers to private lead service line replacement, such as cost, insurance, and liability issues related to work on private property. The federal government has an opportunity to provide leadership by dedicating national funding programs for water and waste-water infrastructure to this issue. This would have national impact and direct work to many small business contractors that typically do service work.

Assistance to homeowners could also be provided to help them deal with the private portion of the service through tax credits or homeowner assistance programs.

Government also has a role to ensure that the presence of lead service lines is identified for properties at the point of sale, when it can be dealt with as part of the real estate transaction.

In January of this year, Health Canada proposed a new guideline for lead in drinking water. We believe this is timely and appropriate and will cause utilities to look more closely at lead in their system.

We have urged Health Canada to consider the points that follow.

If a provincial regulator finds a utility non-compliant on lead, the predominant way to achieve compliance in most systems is to remove the entire lead service, part of which is on private property. Today, many utilities do not have mechanisms to work on private property.

Changing the guideline in one big step, as is proposed, will result in many instances of utilities not being able to achieve the guideline levels. This will create the impression in the eyes of the public of a health crisis where none existed before.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Can we have your closing remarks, Mr. Yates?

[Carl Yates]

I'm right there with you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

[Carl Yates]

We would prefer to see one of two approaches.

One approach would be to not publish a health-related guideline immediately but to work with the provinces to ensure that utilities take steps over the next few years to characterize their lead situation.

The second approach is to recognize that a utility cannot act alone to solve a lead exceedance. Therefore, the provinces could be encouraged to adopt a household action level approach that, rather than finding utilities out of compliance, directs them to take steps to notify, educate, and partner with customers to get their lead issue addressed.

We once again thank you for inviting us here. We would be pleased to address any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thanks very much to all of you.

We'll go to you, Mr. Sweet. Welcome to our committee. It's nice to have you with us today.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair. I appreciate being part of it.

I'm fortunate to come from a municipality that has a program in place and that over several years has begun to replace some of the lead service pipes. It's interesting to listen to your testimony juxtaposed side by side. One person was saying that we virtually have somewhat of a crisis in the way that lead affects young people in particular, in the development of the brain. Of course, as you mentioned, lowering the amount that is permissible would just amplify that as far as a public concern goes, all of which is troubling in and of itself.

Let me ask you this. Is there any technology at present that can actually filter lead out of drinking water? Second, if there is not, is there any pending technology research so that we could have a filtration system that would be a temporary fix as we're eliminating all this lead?

[Carl Yates]

There are a lot of treatment technologies available, certainly, but the best one that we can utilize at the treatment plant is corrosion control. We actually can do a good reduction of lead by corrosion control at the treatment plant, but it's not the total solution. The bigger impact is definitely to remove the lead service line.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Yes, but is there nothing consumer-friendly that a homeowner could put in while they're waiting to save up the $10,000 that would be their portion to remove the lead from the road to their home?

[Carl Yates]

No, not easily. You can try to do some point-of-use devices, but that will cost you as much or more money, and then that has to be maintained by the homeowner. By taking the lead out with a service line replacement, you are getting rid of the majority of the problem, if you do it in combination with corrosion control.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

There is filtration, but it's cost-prohibitive in and of itself for homeowners.

[Carl Yates]

It would be very cost-prohibitive, we believe, at point of use.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you.

Now I'll turn it over to my colleague Ms. Block.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Go ahead, Ms. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I thank all of our witnesses for joining us today.

I heard earlier that a federal-provincial-territorial committee is currently considering whether to lower the drinking water standard for lead to five parts per billion, which is half of what the existing standard is.

When I look at the role of that committee itself, I see that it is a well-established national committee that has been active for over 20 years. Quite frankly, it reports to the federal-provincial-territorial committee on health and the environment, and usually the members who sit on that committee are from the departments of health or environment. I simply flag that for us here in terms of some of the recommendations that we may want to make coming out of this study, because it's clear that the management of drinking water treatment and distribution, as well as waste-water treatment, falls within the provincial jurisdiction.

Also, the FCM has identified that many municipalities are aware of the issues associated with legacy water infrastructure and have been working proactively. I too am very fortunate to live in one of those communities—Saskatoon, Saskatchewan—which has been identified by the FCM.

They've also indicated that they are not aware of a reliable national estimate of the number of lead service lines that are still in use in Canada today, so I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done. We're conducting this study to figure out what we can do in terms of encouraging provinces to put programs in place or even to provide funding.

In closing, on all of those observations I've made, I would say that I've really appreciated the very good testimony we've heard today. I think we have a good understanding of the issue. I would suggest, Madam Chair, that perhaps once we're done with this study, we would want to write a letter to either the health committee or the environment committee, to suggest that they perhaps would want to conduct a study in parallel to what we've done in order to see what can happen at those levels that appear to have the responsibility for studying this issue and coming up with recommendations on a good health policy for Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much. That's a great idea.

We'll move on to Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

To each of our witnesses, thank you so much for being here.

I'll start with Mr. Yates.

Of course, given our conversation before we started, you'll know rural HRM very well. I'm curious as to whether there is a discrepancy between, or any data really.... This may be a bit of an unfair question, because there is so much of the rural municipality that doesn't have water and waste-water services, but do you have any information about the prevalence of lead pipes in rural parts of the municipality, as opposed to in the urban centre?

[Carl Yates]

We don't have any hard statistics to point to in rural areas, other than we know anecdotally that there are fewer lead service lines. Certainly some of the rural areas would be on drilled wells and they're probably a little more modern. A lot of older areas would have started with dug wells, but eventually, when they moved to drilled wells, they'd probably have had better lines that would bring it into the home, although we have seen some galvanized iron lines, which also are problematic. Galvanized iron is also a problematic material.