Transport committee  Thank you. My name is Graham Gagnon. I am a professor at Dalhousie University. I'm the director of the Centre for Water Resources Studies and I'm also the NSERC/Halifax Water industrial research chair in water quality and treatment at Dalhousie. With me today is Mr. Ben Trueman

Transport committee  Yes. I would recommend that the federal government find an active path to assist homeowners and utilities in minimizing lead at the tap. Such pathways could include technical and financial assistance for lead service line replacements for homeowners, a framework and financial a

Transport committee  If I may, I'll address the issue of fountains. Then I'll answer the question on roads. You asked about the role of the federal government in the issue of fountains. We conducted a project that looked at fountains at Dalhousie University, and we found fountains that were actually

Transport committee  Most public buildings would not necessarily have a service line that would be lead. A public building like this one is large, so it would not have a lead service line, which is small. Lead service lines tend to be very focused on the home and smaller public buildings that would a

Transport committee  There are a number of different theories or ideas as to why that's the case. One of the theories is, first—

Transport committee  It's the lead service lines. You can imagine a piece of pipe. The utility is responsible for one side and the other side is the homeowner's responsibility. If the utility cuts their side—and because it's a continuous pipe, they will physically cut it—you can imagine that there ar

Transport committee  I'm an NSERC chairholder. NSERC funds our research program, along with Halifax Water. Very detailed lead studies are still required on a utility-by-utility basis, but there is broad consensus among the scientific community that, first of all, lead is a public health concern. It

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  Yes, and I want to be clear. If you fully remove the lead service line, not partially remove it—

Transport committee  If you fully remove it, you're in a much better spot. We've seen homes that have returned to much lower concentrations, with 80% removal of lead within three months. You can significantly lower your lead burden by fully removing the lead line.

Transport committee  Well, what we talked about previously are the other components inside the home. There might be lead solder or there might be some kind of interesting fixture there, but to have a significant impact on the amount of lead, you have to fully remove the lead pipe.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  No.

Transport committee  Think about the post-World War II boom that Ms. Grenier was talking about. We needed houses built quickly and had to find materials that were cheap and quick and pliable. Lead would fit that category quite reasonably. For post-World War II homes, it's very common to sometimes hav

Transport committee  It's a great guess. Somewhere around the sixties would be a reasonable guess, depending on the city. Somewhere around the late sixties or mid-sixties would be a reasonable guess for some cities. It's not entirely clear, because some cities did things earlier than other cities.