Nutana resident finds lead levels six times Health Canada guidelines in home

A Nutana resident is worried about a recent water test done by the City of Saskatoon after finding the lead concentration was over six times Health Canada’s guideline.

The resident, who asked not to be named, has lived in her current home for 10 years. When they first moved into their home, the city sent them a letter that their house had lead piping.

At that point, they began initial lead concentration testing which came back with results of “very, very low levels of lead,” she said.

After speaking to more neighbours and learning more on the issues they were facing, she said they started to follow the city’s guidelines of flushing their lines every morning.

She knew there was lead in the water of her home, but the results she received Monday on a city test with four litres of un-flushed out water from her home in August 2019 surprised her.

“Even after flushing the lines (in the mornings in the years prior), I’m getting (our water) at six times the acceptable (Health Canada) guideline, I have a lot of concerns like, how is this affecting my health? How is this affecting the health of my children?”

In a City of Saskatoon letter obtained by 650 CKOM, the Nutana resident’s home showed their third litre of lead concentrated testing was at 0.0312 mg/L.

Yesterday, the @cityofsaskatoon deemed Saskatoon’s water safe.

At the same time, a resident in Nutana received results of a study by the city, which was provided to @CKOMNews.

The result?

Lead concentration levels six times Health Canada’s current guidelines. #yxe pic.twitter.com/TqmauzMRkJ

— brady lang (@BradyLangSK) November 5, 2019

All three of the other concentration tests were well over the Health Canada guideline of 0.005 mg/L. The first litre tests came back at 0.0136 mg/L, then 0.0189 mg/L. The final litre tested came back with a total of 0.0267 mg/L of lead.

The test takes about two minutes to gather the four litres of water. The city said lead concentration may be greater than after the recommended flush of five minutes.

Monday, the city said they were on track to replace the remaining underground pipes containing lead. The change is expected to be completed by 2026.

The Nutana resident said the whole situation makes her feel disappointed, especially at the city.

“In a country like Canada, in a major city where you expect to have clean drinking water, that although the water coming out of the city treatment plant is clean, the way its being delivered to my house is causing it to be contaminated. It’s a problem that’s been known about — there just doesn’t seem to have been action in a very vast time frame.”

She’s not alone, either. When asked about the overall outlook from her neighbourhood, she said there’s been numerous instances where her street is closed to fix water lines.

She said she’d like to see an accelerated change to fix the piping, or even a simpler option similar to what the City of Regina is offering.

They have a program that offers a free tap-mounted filter, filtered water pitcher, or a water filter rebate.

“Why don’t we have something like that here?”

A year-long study published Monday by a group of journalists across Canada showed that some areas of Saskatoon have high levels of lead in the tap water.

The areas affected have lead water lines, and are in the city’s older neighbourhoods like Riversdale, City Park and Nutana. In a press conference Monday, the city deemed Saskatoon’s water safe.