The NWT’s education minister says tests that found elevated lead levels in some Yellowknife schools’ water were part of a pilot project taking place for the first time.
Two YK1 schools – Range Lake North School and William McDonald School – have moved to bottled water for drinking and cooking after tests found lead levels beyond Health Canada guidelines.
In the legislature on Tuesday afternoon, Yellowknife North MLA Shauna Morgan asked education minister Caitlin Cleveland when the two schools’ water was last tested for lead in this manner.
While communities’ drinking water is routinely tested, Cleveland responded, the tests in schools were “done as a pilot.”
“This is the first time this work has been done,” the minister said.
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“So it sounds like we don’t know for how long the concern has been there,” Morgan noted.
The City of Yellowknife has not reported any recent concern with the water it supplies through its municipal systems. The quality of that water is regularly tested.
“Given that the city’s water supply is regularly tested and deemed safe, the problem must be with some part of the plumbing or distribution systems at the schools,” Morgan concluded.
“If the plumbing and distribution systems in these two schools are the source of these high lead levels, does the minister know how quickly they can be fixed?”
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Cleveland said more work needs to be done – including follow-up tests to confirm the results of the initial April samples – before questions like that can be answered.
“Until we determine what those results [of follow-up tests] are, and also from there do some exploration as to what the source of the issue is, it would be impossible for me to say what the next steps are for remediating that and fixing that – and if there is in fact a longstanding challenge there that needs to be fixed,” the minister said.
The Department of Education, Culture and Employment has been separately approached for more information about:
- the frequency with which NWT schools have been tested for lead in this way;
- the dates on which the water at the affected schools was tested, and the dates on which results were returned by the lab; and
- advice to parents concerned about their child’s exposure to elevated lead levels.
Cleveland said all NWT schools’ water systems had been tested as part of the same project.
Range Lake North and William McDonald were the only territorial schools where a lead issue was identified, the minister said.
