Evidence of meeting #83 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was utilities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
November 23rd, 2017 / 5:10 p.m.
General Manager, Halifax Water
There is less political involvement; that is correct. I will name that for you.
We do well by that model. We have two regulators. We have water quality and effluent monitoring, and we have business monitoring by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board. Between those two regulators, they have good governance oversight for us, but in the end, we also care a lot about our customers.
I guess that's our own leadership. We really do care about customer service. We have a history of turning around systems that are in rough shape. When we see a problem, we don't wait a long time to act.
That is also why early in the game, we got Dr. Gagnon involved. As a matter of fact, he said he had been doing research since 1998; we got him right out of grad school and put him to work right away, and we've been doing it ever since. We're very fortunate that this year, 2017, marks the 10th anniversary of our industrial research chair with Dr. Gagnon. That was basically what we call a catalyst to get to the bottom of the lead issue and understand it.
I want to come back to that. It's very important that each utility and each municipality get to understand their lead problem. They're not going to have all the answers overnight, and that's why we were fortunate to get in on the ground floor, as they say, to start early, to recognize a problem early and to then take steps to really understand the problem before we jumped in with solutions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much, Mr. Ellis.
Mr. Aubin, do you have some further questions?
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
The witnesses often said that corrosion has to be treated or controlled. As a homeowner, I replace the pipes when I notice there is a leak. Checking the condition of the pipes in my home is not a constant concern for me.
How can corrosion in pipes be controlled at the public, municipal, and residential levels at the same time?
General Manager, Halifax Water
Well, you've touched on a topic that's dear to our hearts and almost as interesting as lead, and that is leakage control. We're also leaders in leakage control in North America.
We have adopted international best practice to chase down leaks early, when they're small. We have continuous monitoring of our system to identify leaks so that if we do have a leak on a customer's service line, we will repair it as quickly as we possibly can. We have very advanced techniques and strategies for that.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Do those technologies exist for the residential sector? At my home, the pipes are between the walls or between the ceiling and the floor. Once there was some water damage at my house caused by a pipe that had been leaking for years, but I only noticed it when the floor collapsed.
General Manager, Halifax Water
Shame on the utility for not acting sooner. We would certainly be able to detect that with our own system. If we have high usage by our customers, we analyze the bills and automatically send a call-out to the customers to alert them to high use. We're able to give good advice.
The good news, I'll tell you as well, is that we're about to implement advanced metering infrastructure, which will take it even a step further. We'll be able to have water consumption control in the hands of the customer in a very short period of time. They can monitor their own use in very close to real time. If they want alerts for anything that's out of the norm, we can even set that up for them as well. The technology exists today. The good news is that a lot of utilities across North America are going to advanced metering infrastructure for all the right reasons. It's a great way to engage your customer, help them manage consumption, and curtail these leaks that you mentioned.
It's in nobody's interest to see water wasted. Neither the utility nor the customer wins in that situation. We look forward to enhancing ours even more than it is today by these types of technologies.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
I conclude therefore that leaks cannot be detected if you live in a municipality where water meters are not mandatory.
General Manager, Halifax Water
If you do not have a meter, you will have one heck of a hard time determining whether or not you have a leakage, for sure. I would strongly recommend that all municipalities in Canada put meters in the system. If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much.
Does anyone else have a short question?
Go ahead, Mr. Fraser.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I don't have a sense of the scope of the cost breakdown between the private and public portions. How much would it cost for a partial replacement compared with a full line replacement? If you do a full line, who bears how much of the cost?
Director, Water Services, Halifax Water
In our municipality now, the average cost of a homeowner's portion is $4,000 to $5,000. The variation depends on the size of the property or how far back it is from the street. It costs the municipality about $10,000. The higher number is because of street restoration, traffic control, and that type of thing.
Currently, in Halifax we pay for our portion and the customer pays for their portion, but as Carl mentioned, since August we've had a program to rebate the customer 25% of their portion.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Just out of curiosity, if there's a municipality that still does partial line replacements, would that be almost the same as the total cost of replacing it by the time, as Mr. Gagnon pointed out, you get a crew on site digging up the yard and that sort of thing?
Director, Water Services, Halifax Water
There are certainly economies to doing it all at once. The best thing for the homeowner is that it can get done in one day if you try to do it together.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much to all of our witnesses. I think that was very valuable information. We appreciate your taking the time to come and visit us today.
Before I adjourn the meeting, just for the information of colleagues, Tuesday we will do clause-by-clause consideration on Bill C-48. We will start immediately following the speeches. Hopefully, the clerk will have us in a meeting room on the Hill so that we won't have to lose too much time. We will continue until we have it finished. Hopefully, we'll have it finished on Tuesday.
Thank you again to the witnesses.
The meeting is adjourned.
