Good afternoon.
The City of Welland, as is the case with many old communities, has lead water issues in a small portion of the city. Our own testing program showed that 10% of the samples exceeded provincial guidelines.
In addition to the city's own replacement program to replace lead services on the city side, in 2008 the city initiated a program to help fund homeowners wishing to replace their private side by budgeting $50,000 to provide fifty-fifty cost sharing to a maximum of $750.
In 2010 the City of Welland and the Niagara Region, which provides the treated water to the city's distribution system, were required to submit a corrosion control plan to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. Submitted in November 2010, the plan highlighted that there were still 1,346 known lead service lines in the distribution system; 612 of the lead services were on the city-owned side, and 734 of the lead services were privately owned.
The use of treatment additives was considered in the plan, but the preferred solution was to replace all of the lead services in the system. Presently there remain 296 known lead services on the city-owned portion and 661 on the privately owned side of the services.
The city estimates that it would take about three to four years to replace all of the remaining known city-owned lead services as we conduct our replacement programs. While the city has removed over 51% of the known lead services on the city side, the private side has not seen similar success, as approximately only 10% of the known lead services have been replaced on the private portion. This low uptake is despite the city's efforts to increase—