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Lead in Greater Victoria’s water? Not likely, CRD says

The issue of water testing has become a hot topic in the U.S., where communities such as Flint, Michigan, are dealing with high lead levels in drinking water from aging pipes.
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Ted Robbins, general manager of the Capital Regional District integrated water service: The concentration of lead in water is “very, very low.”

The issue of water testing has become a hot topic in the U.S., where communities such as Flint, Michigan, are dealing with high lead levels in drinking water from aging pipes.

Could the same problems arise in Greater Victoria?

Ted Robbins, general manager of the Capital Regional District’s integrated water service, emphatically says no.

Greater Victoria has neutral water with low alkalinity, he said. In Flint, corrosive river water flowing through old pipes is blamed for lead leaching into water.

The people of Flint discovered recently that they had been drinking river water laced with lead from the corroding pipes for more than a year, while state and federal officials did nothing to fix the problem.

Exposure to lead can cause behaviour problems and learning disabilities in children as well as kidney ailments in adults.

“We’re in a very different situation here,” Robbins said.

“Typically, our lead concentrations in both raw and treated water will range from either non-detectable to about 0.7 micrograms/litre concentration, which is very, very low.”

The Canadian Drinking Water Quality Guidelines lists the maximum allowable concentration for lead at 10 micrograms a litre.

The crisis in Flint prompted alerts in other U.S. cities, including Sebring, Ohio, where water was also reported to contain unsafe levels of lead. U.S. officials have estimated the price to repair Flint’s corroded water pipes at $1.6 billion US.

But unlike Flint, which has pipes made of lead, the region has no known lead service lines, Robbins said. Thanks to a pipe-replacement program, there is virtually no cast iron with lead joints left.

“For the most part … residential and commercial services are utilizing copper pipe or polyethylene pipe, he said.

Prior to the 1980s, lead solder was used in copper piping in private residences, he said, so there is potential for a small amount of lead in the water.

But the likelihood of danger is low. Many homeowners replace their lines when they update their plumbing systems to low-flow fixtures, he said. “So over time, it will change.”

Upward of 350,000 residents are served by the system in Greater Victoria. An average of 130 million litres of water is used every day. A total of 20,500 hectares is in the protected water supply area, including 11 dams and six reservoirs.

The regional water supply system relies primarily on the Sooke Lake Reservoir, which is owned by the Capital Regional District, as is the water supply area and the surrounding catchment area. The source water and water that is treated to become fit for drinking have “essentially no elevated concentration of any metals,” Robbins said. As a result, the system can operate without a filtration plant.

“There is no risk of any contaminants getting into the source water, which is very different than the condition of the raw water in Flint,” he said.

“For metals like lead, we do monthly tests, and monitor alkalinity weekly, which was a problem with the Flint system, given the corrosiveness of its water.”

Water samples from various system components, including water-treatment plants and transmission mains, are typically collected every second week.

Results — which comply with the limits defined by the B.C. Drinking Water Protection Regulation and the Canadian Drinking Water Quality Guidelines — are posted to the district’s website, crd.bc.ca.

Regional water advisories have been effective in dealing with issues in the past. In 2011, the CRD warned customers on the Highlands drinking-water system not to use their tap water for drinking or food preparation after officials learned the water-treatment system in the area was ineffective at removing a particular toxin. The situation was corrected and water was quickly deemed safe.

“We have a very rigorous water-quality monitoring program,” Robbins said.

mdevlin@timescolonist.com