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The NWT government says it will cover “reasonable costs” for schools awaiting lead tests to switch their water supply as a precaution.
The announcement by education minister Caitlin Cleveland amounted to an admission that confidence in NWT schools’ water is dropping as school after school fails tests for unsafe levels of lead.
More: Mildred Hall School becomes fifth in NWT with unsafe lead in water
Water in five of the first six schools to be checked in a territory-wide assessment has failed to meet Health Canada guidelines. The GNWT has said it is testing the schools it believes to be at the highest risk first.
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These tests appear to be the first ever conducted for water in territorial schools’ lead.
Describing herself in a statement as “deeply concerned” by the results, Cleveland said the series of failed tests “make it clear that we cannot wait for the full testing schedule to finish before taking further protective steps.”
The minister said with immediate effect, any education body has the option to “safely provide alternate drinking water as a precaution, even if testing has not yet been completed.”
“We will reimburse the reasonable costs of doing so,” Cleveland stated. “No education body should wait for test results or hesitate because of budget concerns.”
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The Department of Infrastructure is accelerating the testing schedule where it can, Cleveland told Cabin Radio last week, but dozens of schools remain and there is no published schedule of exactly when each school will be tested.
Results are being posted on a GNWT webpage.
Asked last week if families could have confidence in school water across the territory, Cleveland said at the time she “would have to defer to the experts on advice to residents of that nature.”
Whether the advice from experts had changed in recent days was not made clear in Friday’s statement, but the number of schools failing tests has moved from four to five in the interim.
“Parents deserve peace of mind and students and school staff deserve safe learning environments,” the minister stated on Friday.
“I will continue to act quickly, transparently, and based on expert advice to protect them.”
