Evidence of meeting #85 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 line.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
I believe it was our guest Mr. Iannello from Ontario, who indicated that there was an effort at public education and some other measures taken that had relatively poor uptake, to cut to the chase. Does that communicate to you that the real issue is that people just don't want to pay for private line replacements?
4:10 p.m.
General Manager, Infrastructure and Development Services, City of Welland
It tends to be the issue. The issue here, if you can appreciate it in your own home.... Again, these tend to be in older neighbourhoods. You have two issues. They are in older homes, with older people, so there is an affordability issue. In our neck of the woods, it can easily cost $3,000 or $4,000 to do the work, and we are just talking about the work to do the actual replacement. Now, if the private side runs under your driveway, under your favourite rose bush, up your walkway, or under your deck, the numbers can get quite substantial. As you can imagine, if you have a nicely manicured front lawn or a beautiful interlocking brick driveway or a concrete driveway, you just don't want to rip it up. That's really where the problem is. On the public side, we have every authority to do that.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Let's say you're in a circumstance where the pipe is about to fail and you're going to do a partial line replacement, which I know is not typically the case. What would be the cost difference between doing a partial line replacement of the public component and just doing the whole job, public and private combined?
4:10 p.m.
General Manager, Infrastructure and Development Services, City of Welland
Again, it varies hugely, because you can get a case like mine, for my home. I'm very well set back. It's per metre, shall we say. Historically, the municipal portion is only 20 feet. It could be a little more if you're on the opposite side of the street from where the pipe is. That's where the issue is.
What we in the municipality try to do, in fact, goes back to the educational portion. If we're replacing a whole main and redoing the services, we knock on the homeowner's door and tell them that the best deal they're ever going to get is right then. We say that the contractor is there and is going to do our half. We ask if they would they like to do their half and we say, “Here's the program.” We offer the money and, unfortunately, we mainly get people saying they're not interested.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
On that issue, what I'm trying to figure out in my own mind is that if you have an equal length of pipe, you guys of course would be interested in splitting the cost halfway, but I'm sure there are economies of scale to doing it at the same time. I'm curious. If it's $3,000 or $4,000 to do a replacement, it can't be another $3,000 or $4,000 to do the extra 20 feet or whatever it might be if the crew is already there and you've hired the truck to get there.
Do you have a rough sense, if we're dealing with an equal length of line, of what the actual additional cost is? Is it just the cost of the pipe itself that would be the extra cost?
4:10 p.m.
General Manager, Infrastructure and Development Services, City of Welland
No. The extra cost is the fact that you're excavating right up to the house. You need to dig down. In some cases, the pipe is three or four feet down, so it's excavation, it's restoration.... This is partly why it's very difficult when you're dealing with the private side, right? When you cut through somebody's front lawn, even if it's right in the middle of the lawn, you have to replace the grass, and then, of course, the grass doesn't take and the grass doesn't match the original grass. Then the homeowner's not happy. This is why the municipality doesn't do it themselves.
4:10 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
If I can shift gears a bit here, I'll open this up to our guest from EPCOR as well as you, Mr. Iannello. The solution here, essentially, is that somebody has to pay for the private pipe and nobody wants to do it, including the private homeowner. That's essentially my take-away from this.
We've heard some witnesses testify to the effect that the federal government should create some kind of program to offset the cost. Is there a reason that one level of government or another is better positioned to implement some kind of a program? My head goes to the municipality, because you actually can amortize the cost of this over a generation by charging increased water rates, but is there a reason why one level of government is better positioned than another? If it's a matter of paying for it, is it better to create a new program or would it be better to make private line replacement, say, eligible under something like the gas tax fund?
Sal.
4:15 p.m.
General Manager, Infrastructure and Development Services, City of Welland
We offer money. We offer up to $1,500. We do help with the money. We are probably the best ones to be offering it.
I think the bottom line is that since you're dealing with private property, it's very difficult to force anybody, I guess, for lack of a better word, unless somebody legislated that we have the authority to enter the private property, rip out the line and replace it. Municipalities really don't want to go there. No councillor is going to approve a bylaw saying that I can rip up people's front yards.
We tried to get a bylaw of that type for a number of issues, and it's now subject to council approval. It has to do with other issues. It has to do with stormwater and storm drains, but it's the same concept. It's private property, a man's castle....
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
This is a question right out of left field. What is the normal dimension of the service line from the street to the house? Is there a standard across Canada?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Water Quality Assurance and Environment, EPCOR Utilities Inc.
In Edmonton, it's generally a three-quarter inch diameter.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay.
I saw a demonstration of a line replacement in Vancouver where they had to go through an extremely difficult piece of terrain. All they did was get a slightly smaller dimension of pipe and just slip it through the existing one. Has something like that ever been tried?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Water Quality Assurance and Environment, EPCOR Utilities Inc.
I can comment on that. In Edmonton, the preferred method of doing water service renewals is through directional drilling, which is a good technology because it doesn't involve cutting up patios and infrastructure at the surface. It's similar to what you described, in that a hole is dug in the alley or the front of the house, and a hole is dug in the basement of the home, and a directional drill is put through. A new copper line is fed through, and the old lead line is left in place but disconnected. It works well. We have nine feet of coverage in Edmonton, which is quite a lot of excavation, so the cost of doing a directional drill often makes sense in Edmonton.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I have a question for Ms. Guérin in Trois-Rivières.
Do you have water meters, and are people charged according to the amount of water they use?
4:15 p.m.
Specialist in drinking water, Public Works, Ville de Trois-Rivières
At the moment, we have not installed water meters in residences, but it may not be long, by virtue of some of the results we are getting, which are actually more or less convincing. We have installed some in the system to measure water consumption. Currently, they are mostly in commercial and institutional establishments, as well as in schools and hospitals.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay, because certainly in places where there are water meters, it does open up a mechanism to perhaps front the cost of replacement and then get it back over a period of time.
Mr. Craik, I was interested to hear that you do random testing in the city. Is the random testing for lead?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Water Quality Assurance and Environment, EPCOR Utilities Inc.
Yes, it's specifically random testing for lead.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Is that even in the areas where you've replaced everything?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Water Quality Assurance and Environment, EPCOR Utilities Inc.
We do it in new areas of the city. We do it in all areas of the city—new areas and areas where mains have been replaced, where lead services have been replaced.
The idea of the random testing is to give us a measure of how much contribution to lead at the tap is coming from sources other than the lead service lines, such as the copper that is soldered with lead-tin solder, or the brass fittings.
We find the results quite random across the city. We will find homes that suddenly test above the Health Canada guideline for lead even though sometimes no lead service line is present. It depends somewhat on the age of the home. Newer homes, those built since 2000, are generally in better shape.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
You mentioned that point-of-use filters are made available to people. Would you speculate that you then have a problem with people replacing the filters as they should? How long do the filters normally last and how costly are they to replace?
4:20 p.m.
Director, Water Quality Assurance and Environment, EPCOR Utilities Inc.
That's a great question. In our case, we've been offering our customers the filter device. It comes with a filter cartridge in place. It mounts on the faucet. It's a very small device with limited flow capacity. It lasts for, depending on the model, three months or 90 days, and then the cartridges have to be replaced. We've been offering the filter to our customers with the understanding that they will replace the cartridges, so they take the responsibility for the cartridges. We're sharing that responsibility.
We are also seeing those filters as a stopgap measure. We don't really see those as a permanent long-term solution to the lead issue in any given home.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
My final question would be for Dr. Prévost.
You talked about the sampling protocol. Can you describe for us how close the sampling protocol is to the normal, if you like, use cycle of the public? The public would not normally let the water run for five, 10, or 15 minutes before drawing water for their kettle or to fill a glass.
