WATER WORRIES
Mike Susylinksi inspects a glass of water filled from the free-standing water dispenser at his home in Regina. He does not drink the water that flows from his kitchen tap, due to concerns about high levels of lead in it.
I looked into it and it was very concerning. They say about lead the same thing they say about radiation: there is no safe level for children.
STEVE WOLFSON, Regina resident
In this special report from the Leader-post’s Jennifer Ackerman, Global News’ Katelyn Wilson and a team of journalists, we look at the issue of lead-tainted water in some homes in Regina, Saskatoon and Moose Jaw. More transparency is needed to ensure residents know what they face, and to find solutions.
A collection of 2,600 tap water samples from Regina, Saskatoon, and Moose Jaw reveal that these Saskatchewan cities have some of the highest measured levels of lead-tainted water in Canada.
The data, obtained through freedom of information legislation by a consortium of universities and media companies, including the Regina Leader-post and the Saskatoon Starphoenix, has some residents wondering why they weren’t aware there was a problem.
“(The city) made it sound like it wasn’t really terrible, but that it would be good to take precautions,” said Regina resident Steve Wolfson, whose tap water had levels of lead up to 51.3 parts per billion (ppb) — 10 times the current allowable limit as per Health Canada guidelines. “I feel let down.”
When dissolved in water, lead is colourless, odourless, and tasteless, making it impossible to detect without a lab test. And although it can affect anyone, children and pregnant women are especially at risk. Neurological development and behaviour in children can be affected and adults can experience increased blood pressure or kidney problems.
Wolfson and his wife Penny rent a house in the Cathedral neighbourhood, an area filled with older homes and a history of lead service lines. They care for their nineyear-old twin granddaughters. Two years ago, they were informed that their home was connected to a city-owned lead service line between the water main under their street and the property line.
After the City of Regina did testing on Wolfson’s drinking water in July 2017, they provided him and his wife with detailed results and informed them that levels above the allowable limit for lead were detected.
One sample taken detected lead levels five times the allowable limit at the time and more than 10 times the current allowable limit as per Health Canada guidelines, which the provinces are not obligated to enforce.
“I looked into it and it was very concerning,” said Wolfson. “They say about lead the same thing they say about radiation: there is no safe level for children.”
The collection of sampling results uncovered in this investigation has never previously been made public, leaving residents like Wolfson feeling as though the city isn’t being totally transparent about the problem.
Experts are in disbelief.
“I’m shocked. I’m disappointed. I’m angry,” said Michèle Prévost, a professor of engineering at Polytechnique Montreal and one of Canada’s leading experts on lead in water. “The one thing that’s really missing across Canada is transparency.”
Reviewing the results from the three cities in Saskatchewan, she remarked that similar results in the U.S. would be made public. “If you want to know in Cincinnati if you have a lead service line and how high your lead is, you type your address, you find it. I don’t understand why the monitoring data is not public.”
But knowing there’s lead in your drinking water is only half the battle. Understanding the health risks and what should be done to minimize those risks is an essential next step, a step some Saskatchewan residents feel they’ve been left in the dark about.
Worried for their grandchildren, Wolfson and his wife heeded the city’s advice to install a certified lead-removal water filter. They replace the filters every two to three months at approximately $25 a pop. The city currently offers free water filters and replacement cartridges for up to one year. Due to cost constraints, the city is focusing primary efforts on providing filters for residents and secondary efforts on lead service line replacements. Health Canada guidelines emphasize that filters should only be used as a temporary solution.
The city replaced the lead service line leading into Wolfson’s home this summer through a lead service line replacement program, but he’s still using the filters to be on the safe side. Although he’d like to have the water tested again to know for sure there’s no longer a problem, he can’t afford it on his own at the moment.
Replacement — or testing — is not mandatory for homes that have lead service lines on the private side of the property line.
Homes that are serviced by a cityowned lead service line receive an annual letter warning occupants and offering free water testing and a filter, but the response rate is only 30 per cent, according to the City of Regina, leaving 70 per cent of homes at risk of unmanaged lead levels in their drinking water and the health problems that can go along with it.
“There needs to be a responsibility by the city to say, ‘We will make sure that your water does not have toxic levels of lead’ and that everybody knows about it,” said Wolfson. “(The city) was telling me, ‘Well, some of the houses, it’s only on the owner’s side of the pipe. It’s not the city side.’ All right, but don’t we have the responsibility, the (Ministry) of Health or somebody, to say to these parents, ‘You must protect your children?’ ”
While lead levels detected in homes across Regina, Moose Jaw and Saskatoon were found to be some of the highest results in the country, the consortium also found that some of those are comparable, and in some cases higher, than those found in Flint, Michigan, at the height of its water crisis in 2015 that put the city in a state of emergency.
CRISIS IN FLINT, MICHIGAN
Flint made international headlines in 2015 after elevated levels of lead were found in residents’ tap water.
The problem began after the city of roughly 100,000 people switched from a Detroit water source to their own water treatment plant, which drew from the Flint River water that is more corrosive to lead. Up until then, Flint’s plant had only served as a backup system.
Detroit treated the water it was supplying to Flint with orthophosphate, a substance that forms a protective film inside pipes that prevents lead from dissolving into the water. When Flint started to treat its own water as a cost-cutting measure, it didn’t implement this crucial step designed to keep lead levels low across the city.
City and state officials asserted Flint’s water complied with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s norms, which require that no more than 10 per cent of samples in a city have lead levels above 15 parts per billion (ppb).
But one particularly high result — 104 ppb — found in early 2015 at the home of Leeanne Walters spurred independent research that revealed the real scope of the problem.
Concerned for her children’s health, Walters undertook a more comprehensive study of the city’s water alongside other Flint residents and researchers from Virginia Tech.
A state of emergency was declared in Flint in 2016 and $5 million in aid was authorized by the White House.
Facing mounting public pressure, Flint switched back to distributing treated Detroit water in October 2015 and started to add additional orthophosphate to its water supply in December of that year to help recreate the protective lining inside pipes more quickly.
While the median of all 277 homes sampled by Virginia Tech researchers in August 2015 was 3.5 ppb, the team found 17 per cent of samples exceeded 15 ppb, with several levels above 100 ppb. Even after running the water for 45 seconds, one home had 1,051 ppb.
The consortium compared lead levels from Saskatoon, Regina and Moose Jaw homes with lead service lines to levels found in Flint homes with the same type of pipes at the height of its crisis.
Flint, for good or bad, is now what we hold up as what’s galvanizing a lot of us to do better, to protect our kids from lead poisoning.
In Regina’s homes with lead service lines, the fourth litre out of the tap in the morning — after just a minute of water use — averaged 26 ppb and, in Saskatoon, 58 ppb; in Flint in August 2015, the same types of homes had lead levels averaging 10 ppb in the same measurement.
Documents obtained via freedom of information request from the City of Moose Jaw detailed lead levels in 105 homes averaging 25 ppb in the first litre of water out of the tap in the morning, after it had sat in the pipes overnight. In Flint, that average was 22 ppb. While some water officials reject comparisons to Flint, lead levels flowing from taps are comparable across jurisdictions, according to three leading experts who reviewed the investigation’s analysis.
“Flint, for good or bad, is now what we hold up as what’s galvanizing a lot of us to do better, to protect our kids from lead poisoning,” said Bruce Lanphear, a leading expert in the health effects of lead. Lanphear is based at Simon Fraser University in B.C.
Marc Edwards, a researcher from Virginia Tech who is widely credited with uncovering the crisis in Flint, singled out the City of Regina’s testing method as “rigorous,” but urged city officials to share the results with all city residents.
The problem that he reviewed in the data “would be publicly disclosed in the U.S.,” he said. “This is a serious lead issue. I mean, it’s worse than Flint, and you saw how people were criticized for not disclosing that problem in Flint.”
Pat Wilson, Regina’s director of water, waste and environmental services, emphasized that fewer people in Regina are exposed to these lead levels because a smaller percentage of the city’s homes have lead service lines compared to Flint.
“We reject the comparison to Flint, Michigan. Ninety-five per cent of city-owned water service connections today are lead-free,” said Wilson.
Officials in Moose Jaw and Saskatoon also rejected the comparison.
“We don’t feel it’s a fair comparison,” Josh Mickleborough, Moose Jaw’s director of engineering, responded in a written statement. “Our water supply from Buffalo Pound (Water Treatment Plant) meets all safety regulations and there are roughly only about 2,000 city-owned lead service connections in existence.”
He added that the city proactively performs random testing each year on private lead connections and informs property owners of the results.
Angela Gardiner, Saskatoon’s general manager of utilities and environment, said the situation in Flint is “completely different” than Saskatoon’s.
“Our understanding is that it is an issue with their water supply and when they switched water supplies ... we’re very confident that our potential lead levels are well below what is regulated,” she said.
But again, experts disagreed. “We have Flints right across Canada because of the absence of regulation to push the numbers down,” said Prevost, the Quebec engineering professor who is consulted by cities internationally on lead levels in drinking water.
“I do understand the water producers to be timid with this, to be compared with a terrible situation with bad water treatment, bad distribution. But the fact of the matter is, we’re talking about similar lead levels.”
LACK OF CORROSION CONTROL
Lead most commonly makes its way into drinking water through lead service lines, but lead solder was also used in Canada up until 1986. The National Plumbing Code allowed lead materials in pipes until 1975 and restrictions on lead content in plumbing fixtures only tightened in 2014.
The City of Regina installed lead in the early parts of its history and even into the 1960s, according to Wilson.
Regina originally had approximately 7,000 lead service lines on the public side of residential property lines, but has reduced that number to 3,600 over the years through replacements. About 2,000 (17 per cent) of Moose Jaw homes receive their water through publicly-owned lead service lines, while the City of Saskatoon has more than 2,800 left to replace.
“The private side is most likely lead for the vast majority of these locations,” according to the City of Saskatoon. “There are a further 239 properties in our database where the private side is lead, but the city side is not.”
The city said those locations have been flagged as “needing discussion on what the city responsibility is” for those homes.
Replacement of lead service lines can be a long process involving co-ordination between cities and homeowners. In the meantime, there are other ways to mitigate lead levels in drinking water that have not been pursued by Saskatchewan cities.
While working to replace their lead pipes, cities can lower the amount of lead dissolving into residents’ water either by making their water less acidic or adding orthophosphate to the water, which creates a protective film inside plumbing. Orthophosphate was part of the solution in Flint, successfully lowering lead levels.
Several Canadian cities add orthophosphate to their treated water. Toronto started to add the food-grade additive in 2014.
“The decision to add phosphate is supported and endorsed by Toronto Public Health as a safe way to reduce the amount of lead in tap water and the health risks associated with lead in drinking water,” the city said on its website.
In the summer of 2009, testing by the City of Toronto showed lead levels averaged 6.1 ppb after 30 minutes of stagnation in homes suspected of having a lead service line. In contrast, an average lead level of 1.2 ppb was found last year.
The City of Regina is currently working with a national expert from Dalhousie University to explore such a “corrosion control” strategy, but Wilson said they wouldn’t implement anything until planned upgrades to the Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant are complete.
“That’s going to change the profile of the water,” said Wilson of the upgrades. “When we change one factor, it has implications all the way through the system.”
If corrosion control is introduced before the upgrades, the program would have to be adjusted again, so the city remains in a testing phase until the upgrades — expected to take a couple of years — are complete.
The plant also services Moose Jaw, putting the city in a similar situation as Regina, with no corrosion control until Buffalo Pound implements something.
The City of Saskatoon said it doesn’t use corrosion control like orthophosphate because it adequately controls its water’s ph levels. Less acidic water tends to leach less lead out of plumbing.
But annual reports show the water leaving Saskatoon’s water treatment plant has an average ph of 8.1. Health Canada said lead concentrations are lowest when a city’s water has a ph above nine.
Many U.S. cities add lime or caustic soda to their water to increase the ph level above nine, without any adverse effects on its quality or taste. Providence, Rhode Island, aims even higher, distributing water with a ph averaging 10.2 in order to minimize lead levels.
When asked why the province doesn’t mandate corrosion control, a method shown to effectively reduce lead levels, Patrick Boyle with Saskatchewan’s Water Security Agency, said it’s not a one-sizefits-all solution.
“What works for one municipality may not work for another,” said Boyle, adding that the end solution is replacement.
But if the situation continues to escalate to the point where the WSA would need to take action, the potential is there to mandate corrosion control measures, he said.
“We’re maybe not at that point right now,” said Boyle.
When asked why three Saskatchewan cities exceeding average lead levels seen in Flint during the height of the crisis isn’t enough to compel the WSA to take action now, Boyle said they are taking action “on a lot of those fronts to have conversations with municipalities and with homeowners.”
THE SCOPE OF THE ISSUE
“We have good records for what the city has. What we don’t know is what’s on the private side,” said Wilson at the City of Regina.
About 4,500 to 5,000 letters are sent out annually to homeowners and tenants who own or live in a building serviced by a city-owned lead service line.
“To find out more information on the health impacts of lead in drinking water, visit Saskh20.ca or call the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Environmental Public Health, at 306-766-7755,” is the only mention of health concerns in the letter.
But residents who don’t follow up with the city once they receive a letter are left at risk. The health and safety of them and their families is left to chance, and the onus placed on them to understand the health risks associated with elevated lead levels in their tap water.
Of Moose Jaw’s approximately 12,000 homes, about 2,200 (or 17 per cent) are serviced by a cityowned lead service line, according to Mayor Fraser Tolmie.
Currently, the city is responsible for the portion of line between the water main and the property line, while residents are responsible for the portion from the property line into the home. Homeowners are not obligated to replace their side of the line.
Homeowners who have had work done on their lead service line — whether it’s the public or private side — are eligible to receive one free lead water filter unit that can last up to six months, according to the city.
“Future filter replacement is the responsibility of the homeowner,” said the city in a written statement.
In addition to those service lines, about 80 kilometres of Moose Jaw’s water mains are made of cast iron, which poses its own issues. These mains are scheduled for replacement through a 20-year Cast Iron Water Replacement Program. City-owned lead service lines are replaced through it as well.
Cast iron water mains are usually found in the same older areas of a community that have lead service lines. They can leach iron into the water, sometimes resulting in water that has a yellowish or orangish tinge, like rust.
Leaching from those cast iron mains can be reduced the same way lead leaching is reduced from service lines: by adding a substance to the water, such as sodium hydroxide or orthophosphate, that either makes the water less acidic or forms a protective film inside pipes.
Currently, the pace of replacing lead service lines on private property is slow, averaging 14 per year between 2014 and 2016. To help speed up the Cast Iron Water Replacement Program, Tolmie said he hopes to implement a levy next year. In 2016, the city held a plebiscite and the results showed the community was not only willing to pay a levy, but also “shared utilities and taxes” toward the cast iron water replacement, according to Tolmie. The levy has not been passed by council yet.
PREGNANT WOMEN, CHILDREN AT HIGHER RISK
According to the World Health Organization, there is no safe level of lead. The heavy metal’s effects range from learning disabilities to hypertension. Children under the age of six, pregnant women and developing fetuses are most at risk, but Health Canada says lead exposure poses a risk to anyone’s health.
At lower levels it has been linked to high blood pressure and renal dysfunction in adults, as well as a greater number of miscarriages and preterm births.
In children, lead levels previously thought to be safe can affect brain development and have been linked to ADHD, lower IQS and academic performance, behavioural problems and delayed puberty.
In March 2019, Health Canada decreased its maximum acceptable concentration for lead in drinking water from 10 ppb to five ppb.
“Canada is a little ahead of the game. In many ways, though, we have failed to study the problem,” said Lanphear. “We have tended to gloss over it.”
Lanphear has been studying the health impacts of lead for 25 years.
He said lead poisoning can be thought of in two ways: overt poisoning due to extraordinarily high levels where children might die, have seizures or abdominal colic; and chronic low-level exposure, which he described as insidious and invisible.
The former is rare in North America these days, said Lanphear. The latter is more common and concerning.
“Unless we test children, we don’t see that they might be lead poisoned,” said Lanphear. “Although later in life, like when they start school, the teacher and the parents may recognize that the kid’s really struggling, having a hard time learning, can’t pay attention, acting out, those kinds of things.”
RESIDENTS CALL FOR MORE TRANSPARENCY
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency requires that all municipal water users must be provided with a consumer confidence report for their drinking water, which includes lead levels.
“Non-residence users must also be notified through signs, bulletin boards and other delivery methods,” the agency further explained in response to questions from a consortium reporter.
Despite the high levels, none of the three Saskatchewan cities post test results publicly, as is done in every city in Ontario.
Wilson says the city doesn’t post results online because a high lead result in one home doesn’t mean neighbours will have the same issue. On the flip side, if a home comes up with no concerning levels of lead, it doesn’t mean nearby houses don’t have an issue.
But Regina resident Mike Susylinksi said he thinks everyone should know about concerning levels of lead. Susylinksi’s water was tested two-and-a-half years ago, before he owned his home. He said it wasn’t until the consortium reached out to him that he knew levels above the allowable limit had been detected.
Serviced by a public lead service line, results from his home showed levels as high as 14 times the allowable limit of five ppb.
“Public results? I think that’s actually kind of a great idea. We’re all a community,” said Susylinksi. “It’s important to me, so I think maybe it’s important to someone else, too.”
Sometime after he bought the house, he received a pamphlet from the city that offered a free filter, which he accepted. But with the cost of the filters only covered by the city for a year, Susylinksi and anyone else with a city-provided filter will be stuck footing the bill until the lead service line feeding into their homes is replaced.
A LEADER FOR LEAD LINE REPLACEMENT STRATEGY
Health Canada recommends replacement of lead service lines as the best permanent solution to lead exposure, and filters as a temporary solution.
Prior to the City of Regina’s replacement program, the city replaced on average about 100 city-owned lead service lines every year. In 2017, it replaced 109 lines, in 2018 it replaced 144. The city says it is on track to increase the replacement rate by 10 per cent by the end of 2019 for a total of 160 replacements this year.
In contrast, the City of Saskatoon is considered a leader in North America for the way it is tackling the issue of lead service lines in the city.
Saskatoon requires homeowners have their lead service lines replaced, but provides significant support to make it happen.
According to the City of Saskatoon website, the city doesn’t allow partial replacement of lead service connections “because of the increased risk to public health.” Studies show that disturbing lead pipes and replacing only the public portion can increase lead levels significantly for weeks, if not months. And after that spike immediately following the partial replacement, the private portion made of lead can pose a health risk.
For that reason, Saskatoon has chosen to excavate and replace lead service lines right into the house and subsidize the cost. The city takes on 60 per cent of the bill, while homeowners cover the other 40 per cent. Under the program, Saskatoon allows homeowners to repay the city immediately or over three or five years; there are other options for low-income property owners. All repayment plans are interest-free.
“Over the last number of years, the city has spent almost $20 million on replacing lead lines in Saskatoon, and by 2026 we will be reaching the point where all of the lead lines in all private properties have been replaced,” said Gardiner.
Saskatoon replaces between 300 and 400 lead service lines every year. It has just over 2,800 public lead service lines left to replace.
Unlike Regina, Saskatoon does not offer free filters to mitigate risks until a replacement can be done. Instead, the city recommends residents run their water for five minutes before using if it’s sat stagnant for six hours or more.
“That’s proven to be very effective in getting rid of any additional risk that there might be for that stagnant water,” said Gardiner at the City of Saskatoon.
“Extensive flushing could be protective, if proven to be so,” said Prévost. “But it’s unlikely to be done by users because it’s not practical.”
Prévost recommended that residents use filters or be provided with filters.
Neither Regina nor Moose Jaw share replacement costs with residents who wish to replace the portion of their lead service lines that lies on private property, and neither city requires the lines be replaced in full, from the water main all the way into the house, when work is carried out.
Moose Jaw residents Craig Reichert and Roxanne Rath were first alerted that they might have lead service lines leading up to and on their property around 2010.
After the city tested their water, they said the results were mailed to them.
“They didn’t say anything. They just said, ‘Here are your results and here’s what the normal level is’,” recalled Rath. “(We were) quite surprised to find out, you know, not only that we had lead piping, but how high of a content it was in our water.”
When the consortium did its own testing at the couple’s home, samples were found to have lead levels of 14 ppb in the first litre out of the taps in the morning, 65 ppb after running the water for 45 seconds, and 7.1 ppb at the two-minute mark. The highest test result, which measured lead levels in water that sat in their service line, was 13 times the current Health Canada guideline of five ppb.
“We’ve been lucky, but how long is that going to last?” said Rath. “Neither of us are very young anymore, so we really can’t take any chances with our health any more than we already have, I think.”
When they first considered replacing their portion of the lead line, the cost was estimated at $3,800. By the time they felt they could afford to pull the trigger, the couple say the cost had risen to $9,000 minimum.
They still haven’t replaced their lines because of the cost and say the city won’t replace the municipal portion until Reichert and Rath have replaced their side.
“If we have a break in (the pipe), then they’ll be forced. There’ll be an emergency repair and they said then it’ll cost us way more,” said Rath.
With many low-income families in Moose Jaw, the couple doesn’t see how residents are going to be able to afford to replace their lead service lines, let alone pay for bottled water or water filters to use in the meantime.
“I just feel that they’re not doing enough to help the owner,” said Rath. “And, again, ideally, I don’t think we should have to pay for it. I mean, I get it when you build a new house you pay for those lines to come to your house, but after that, that’s part of the infrastructure, in my opinion. And that belongs to the city.”
LEFT IN THE DARK, LEFT IN THE LURCH
Despite what experts call concerning and potentially dangerous lead levels that could affect some residents in Saskatchewan, municipalities and the province do not believe there is an urgent threat to public health.
“We don’t see it as an imminent issue; it’s something that can be mitigated,” said Wilson at the City of Regina.
She said the city has been working with the Ministry of Health and it is not something the province has flagged as a huge concern, but the city is always looking for ways to improve its lead response.
“We want to make sure that people are looked after, that’s why we’ve been doing a program,” she said. “That’s why we’ve been growing the program over time.”
Even if the city quickens the pace of replacement, she said there’s
still going to be a need for interim measures — like lead water filters — to mitigate the risks.
“That’s … been our main focus,” said Wilson. “And the education, getting people to understand that they need to take that action, take advantage of the free filter.”
But experts said that’s not enough.
“We have to do everything in our power to reduce the lead exposure,” said Edwards, the Virginia Tech researcher. “There’s no fixing the harm that’s done. And drinking water’s probably the last source of lead that’s been relatively uncontrolled.”
In addition to taking more action, more transparency is a must, he added. “If I were in their shoes I would want to have a clear conscience and warn people about this issue and how they can protect themselves. That’s after 15 years of dealing with public officials who deservedly lost trust.”
Responsible for two little girls and worried about the rest of his community, Wolfson is disappointed in how the City of Regina has handled the problem.
“The Flint, Michigan thing certainly woke up a lot of people and made me think about it, but I still didn’t think Regina would let this happen to us,” said Wolfson. “I feel like they were supposed to take care of us.
“They were supposed to ensure that we had clean, safe drinking water, and they let us down.”