Transport committee  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-ma

Transport committee  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

Transport committee  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 servic

Transport committee  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 t

Transport committee  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 th

Transport committee  With regard to lead, no.

Transport committee  In Edmonton, it's generally a three-quarter inch diameter.

Transport committee  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

Transport committee  Yes, it's specifically random testing for lead.

Transport committee  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 sou

Transport committee  Just on the question of whether water returning to our treatment plant has lead in it, our supply is a river supply, so upstream of us there is very little development. The water that comes into our treatment plant is generally fairly low in lead and not impacted by our discharge

Transport committee  I'm Steve Craik, and I'm with EPCOR in Canada. EPCOR owns and operates the drinking water system for the City of Edmonton. We provide drinking water to a population of about 900,000 for the City of Edmonton and approximately 65 communities in the Edmonton region, serving a popul