Canada - WUC adds chemical to drinking water to battle lead

WUC adds chemical to drinking water to battle lead

Within the last week, the Windsor Utilities Commission started adding phosphate at about two parts per million to the city’s drinking water through its A.H. Weeks Water Treatment Plant.

“Certainly, lead is not something you want, that’s why there’s a limit on it,” said John Stuart, vice-president of operations for Enwin, which runs WUC. “But it’s a long-term issues. It’s not an acute issue.”

The issue first raised its head in London a couple of years ago, when some small amounts of lead were found in the drinking water there. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change then required other municipalities to test for lead.

As it turns out, about 13 per cent of samples taken from Windsor homes registered small amounts of lead, at perhaps 10 parts per billion.

It’s not so much a problem with the overall system, Stuart says, but with individual houses and the pipes leading to them. Plus, old homes can sometimes have lead pipes inside, as well as lead fixtures or lead solder.

“To the best of our knowledge, none of the (water) mains are lead,” Stuart said. “But we still find lead surfaces, both on our side of the service and on the customers’ side. When we find lead surfaces on our side, we replace them. That’s a given.”

The tricky part is convincing home owners to replace questionable pipes that run from the water mains to their homes, which typically costs between $2,500 and $3,500.

When WUC finds homes with lead pipes, the utility alerts the customers and encourages them to upgrade. But WUC has no jurisdiction on private property and therefore can’t force anybody to replace pipes...............