Transport Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[Michèle Prévost]

It's an excellent question. I have students working on this right now. There are no studies except one old European study that measured how much lead was in there every time somebody took a glass of water or used water for cooking. You would take a subsample and you'd see over a week the average lead concentration you'd have in a home. You then compared that to various protocols. We're doing that and we've done so many different protocol comparisons and we found that with the data we have now that it's somewhere in between the six hours and the 30-minute stagnation, which makes sense. Six hours was too long; 30 minutes may not be wholly protective, but with a low lead number such as five, it would be.

It is not a simple question because in a household with one person you would not use as much water and lead may be higher than if you have two households sharing one service line in a duplex, for example, and then water runs a lot. To summarize, it's in between the two sampling protocols.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Dr. Prévost.

We'll move to Mr. Lobb.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks very much.

EPCOR, I was curious, when you were making one of your statements, were you saying that you've done testing in homes that don't have lead pipes, and you've had tests where you found lead in their water? Did I hear that incorrectly?

[Stephen Craik]

You heard that correctly. When we do that random sampling program in all homes across the city, we do occasionally find homes that test above the Health Canada guideline for lead, presumably from the plumbing components. The concentration in those homes in general is much less than it would be in a set of homes that have lead service lines, but it does point out that even if you eliminated all the lead service lines in Edmonton, you'd still have a bit of a residual issue with lead.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

It wouldn't be widespread or we would all know this, but have any significant health issues been reported to EPCOR, to the city, with regard to health-related incidents?

[Stephen Craik]

With regard to lead, no.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay. At the end of the day, the take-away for the committee is that the long-term goal should be to encourage homeowners to remove their lead service lines. From your years of experience, what's the take-away the committee should have?

[Stephen Craik]

I think awareness needs to be raised among our drinking water customers. Certainly in the City of Edmonton we try to raise awareness, but I think there needs to be a broader awareness of the lead service line pipe, and then probably some fairly standard ways of funding the service line replacements.

As the City of Welland is doing, in Edmonton we're currently looking at 100% funding of lead service line replacements through the rate base. We're a regulated utility, so we would do that with a deferral count over 65 years. That's one approach, and it works in our particular case where we have a fairly small number of lead service lines distributed over a larger population compared to, say, the city of Montreal. It works out to an incremental rate increase. Most customers wouldn't notice. It might be different in other locations.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

How about the gentleman from the City of Welland?

[Sal Iannello]

I concur with what's been said for Edmonton. That's where we stand. The take-away is it's public education, and that's partly why we also involve the public health department. When you have the medical officer of health making statements or their staff going to see the person, it carries a little more weight.

We're particularly careful if we run into a young family, because that's where the problem is. For most adults, I think the amount of water and the health dangers aren't quite as bad. That's why it is a public awareness issue. Because it is a small portion of the municipality, it is really hard to target them, so we do make an effort. As I previously mentioned, we try to fund it and we try to get the notice out to everybody that it's important and that we should do it.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Certain people set in their ways would say that they've lived there for 40 years and they're just fine, so they're not doing it. I am thinking, when that person with that frame of mind sells their home, I'm just wondering.... I don't like to put this on realtors or the real estate associations, and even the building inspectors, but usually real estate transactions nowadays are subject to a building inspection. That's the only thing I wonder. They do it in rural areas for septic systems, and they do it in other areas for oil furnaces to make sure the oil tank is up to code, and they will point out if you have urea formaldehyde for insulation. I'm wondering if that isn't something building inspectors and realtors should be encouraging in purchases of old homes or homes that are 30 years plus, to maybe put that in there at that time. That's the time to have that service line replaced. That's just a thought.

Don't be quoting me that I said they're going to have to do that, but I'm just throwing out there that it seems to be one of the times where people might be very.... If it's a new couple buying a home, they want to make sure it's good, and they might be encouraged to do it at that time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lobb. That's a good idea.

Mr. Iacono.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you very much for being here today. My colleague said that he was really left field. I'm going to go right field.

I hear that you all have extensive experience and knowledge in this matter. We know that this is a complex problem, and it is crystal clear that action is needed. The question is, what and how? I'm addressing the question to you all, and we'd like to hear your comments.

What are your two or three suggestions you have to give us? You've researched this matter intensively. Yes, we are the legislators, but we need your input on what you suggest be done. What's the most immediate action that could be done? We must also take into consideration the cost, the bottom line, because there's a figure, and the higher the figure, the slower the action. How do we capitalize on spending less and having more results than spending more and having fewer results?

That's it. Can each one of you give us some insights on that? Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Who would like to start?

[Stephen Craik]

I'll start.

I think Health Canada is moving in the right direction with its guideline and then in revisions to the guideline that include specific changes to how samples are collected. That really helps water utilities in some sense drive the issue to their funders, decision-makers, when you have a clear guidance at the federal level. There does have to be some kind of coordination among the provinces, though, of the regulators. In Alberta, it's Alberta Environment, the Ministry of the Environment in Ontario, and so on.

Ensure we have some kind of consistency across the country. That's an important one to move in the right direction.

[Michèle Prévost]

I would like to add that it would be important to consider any policies to accelerate the replacement of the lead service lines both on the public side and on the private side. We had 21 utilities sharing with us the difficulties and the barriers to getting this private side funded. They are done. The funds were one of them, but there's also just the trouble and the cost. We do have costs for 21 of these utilities on the private side, and they are important, from $500 to $8,000. Those are considerable costs to the homeowner.

While this gets done, because even if we do move forward and replace these lead service lines on both sides, any action that would promote and support corrosion control while these lead service lines are being taken out is important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Iannello.

[Sal Iannello]

I totally concur with the other two speakers. That's really what needs to be done, definitely funding to get the private side and the public side done. The only thing left is, as we call it, the sledgehammer approach, where it is legislated that thou shalt replace the pipe. Most municipalities want to do that for political reasons.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Sikand, you have two minutes.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for Stephen or Marie-Claude, but anyone can please correct me while I go through this.

We've had a few witnesses come through. The way I see this, the main problem, aside from obviously the lead, is the fact that homeowners can't really afford to replace their portion of the service line. In order to remove as much lead as possible, you need a full replacement. The partial replacement just doesn't cut it.

It's difficult to address this from a government standpoint because the division of powers, if you will, make it a bit complicated. I think the real solution here or the most viable solution is actually the last point of contact, because even if you do the full replacement, there are corrosive elements that still leak into the water.

Stephen, you're saying that a filter probably isn't the most effective way, but we've seen in the United States that they actually do mandate that in some places. Isn't the best solution actually just to implement filters?

[Stephen Craik]

As a water utility, I would say I probably have a philosophical difference with that. The problem with filters is that they have to be maintained by homeowners in the long term. Water utilities and municipalities are not really equipped to maintain filter systems within buildings. There are all sorts of different filters that do all sorts of different things at all sorts of different costs and prices to maintain. Doing that would become fairly complex. I'm not sure in the long term that would be successful.

From a water utility point of view, we would like to be able to provide water up to the service connection and up to the tap that is safe to drink, which includes being, as Dr. Prévost noted, not too corrosive. We haven't talked a lot about corrosion control today. Another approach a utility can use is to adjust their water chemistry to make the water the least corrosive possible.

I didn't mention it yet but we are looking at the addition of phosphate in Edmonton to further reduce lead levels all around in combination with aggressive lead service line replacement. That's the strategy we would tend to use. Then hopefully you're just left with a few hot spots here and there that might be dealt within the buildings themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Block or Mr. Chong, do you have any questions?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I have a question. My question is for Sal Iannello, the general manager of Welland's infrastructure and development services.

At the city level, you'll have an asset management plan, and the regional government will also have one. The regional government's asset management plan would be in the range of, I assume, hundreds of millions dollars for water and waste-water treatments, capital renewals, over the next decade or so. We've been hearing complaints about federal programs for infrastructure as they relate to water and waste-water services in that the federal programming requirements for these large federal infrastructure funds don't align with the priorities set by the asset management plans that the Province of Ontario has mandated for upper- and lower-tier municipalities throughout the province. Is that what you're finding as well?

[Sal Iannello]

I don't know if I'd say they don't align completely. I guess the thing is that every municipality is a little different as a result of maybe what they were or were not paying attention to at one time. Something we historically had issues with is that some of the points often appeared to, shall we say, reward bad behaviour in the past. If you had a lot of exceedances or boil water orders, all of a sudden you got a pile of money, whereas the municipalities that had looked after their systems quite well couldn't show a real need.

I think that's the biggest complaint we as a municipality have had. We've never had a boil water order in our municipality, yet for many years, that was one of the first questions asked on the forms when we would apply for money.

I can appreciate that you want to start with the worst first, but, as you say, it seems in the end to have rewarded the people who had not done proper asset management.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Do you work for the City of Welland or for the regional municipality of Niagara?