Q&A: Yellowknife’s mayor and city manager on lead concerns

Yellowknife’s mayor says he’s satisfied the city’s water supply is safe to drink but concerned by new test results that show elevated lead in the water at some municipal facilities.

Mayor Ben Hendriksen and city manager Stephen Van Dine held a press conference on Tuesday after the city announced its garage, curling club, community arena and City Hall had registered elevated lead levels in some sinks or fountains. (The fieldhouse and multiplex got the all-clear. In affected facilities, sometimes the concern was limited to one or two fittings.)

The issue is the same one the NWT government is identifying in many of the territory’s schools: older plumbing in some buildings appears to be leaching lead into the water before people go to drink it.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Hendriksen reiterated the city’s message of the past six months that Yellowknife’s water supply is safe and doesn’t have lead levels above Health Canada guidelines.

“I have no concerns on that front,” he said.

“We’ve taken the step of doing the testing on our own facilities, which is not a regulatory thing we had to do but we did it as a responsible employer. Now that we recognize these challenges, now we have to deal with it, and so that’s what we’re doing.”

Hendriksen expects the city to come up with “our own remediation plan in the coming weeks, months in order to deal with this.” The anticipated cost of that isn’t yet clear.

Here are some of the questions and answers from the press conference.

How elevated are the lead levels in these city facilities?

City manager Van Dine said the specific data for each facility’s tests wuld be released “shortly.”

At the city’s garage, he said levels were “four times the acceptable level, which is quite elevated, so we’re taking remedial action on that right away.”

More testing is on the way, including some additional tests at facilities that were already inspected and an expansion of tests to other facilities. The library, for example, has not yet been tested.

The timeline for the next round of tests on municipal facilities isn’t firm.

More: Read the city’s own Q&A about its testing

“We’re moving as quickly as we can right now,” said Van Dine. He said the city is “shifting gears” from having its own staff carry out the tests to bringing in a contractor – a move the GNWT also made last year.

“Hopefully we’ll have some news on that in the next day or two, on how quickly we’re shifting in that regard,” said Van Dine.

Is there any sense of what testing and fixing things will cost?

Not yet, no, and we don’t have much sense of that at the territorial level either.

“We’re still in the very initial stage,” said Hendriksen on Tuesday.

“We did initial testing on a few locations within city facilities. Now we’re going to go broaden that out.

“It’s sort-of one of those things that will have to be dealt with when we get there.”

What does this mean for staff at affected facilities?

“We’re asking folks to read and get educated,” said Van Dine when asked about the impact on staff. He said a meeting of the city’s occupational health and safety committee will take place on Friday.

“I think there’s been a lot of education that’s been going on in the last number of weeks and months related to this issue, so I think we’re all going to be much more probably literate on lead and water,” the city manager said.

After walking through the municipality’s findings to date at Friday’s meeting, Van Dine said the city will make sure “people are aware of what to do from a personal point of view if they’re concerned about their health, and then we’ll keep updating that information as we go.”

Is the city in touch with the chief public health officer?

Yes, Van Dine said, adding that the chief public health officer’s staff are satisfied the city’s actions so far are “appropriate.”

“At this stage, we are continuing to share our sample points so they can validate and verify for their own selves that the steps we’ve taken meet their requirements,” he said.

Why is trucked water included in the expanded testing list?

In theory, the water you get through municipal pipes should be essentially identical to the water delivered to some Yellowknife homes and businesses by truck. (Not all of Yellowknife has water and sewer pipes.)

However, the city says it will separately test trucked water to be certain, alongside more than a dozen other sampling points on the list.

Trucked water comes from the same source as piped water but “has to make its way through plumbing and internal appurtenances” to reach the truck fill point, public works director Chris Greencorn said.

“So for water to get from the reservoir, which would be in a non-exposed lead position, through our system and out the intake to a truck, there could be lead exposure there.”

Greencorn said pipe replacement work has already been “extensive” at the truck fill site, and the city is “confident that there’s no exposure” related to trucked water, but will test it anyway “to cover all of our bases.”

What if residents are concerned about their home’s plumbing?

“My house was built in 1986. It could possibly have [affected] fittings. I would say it’s up to each property owner to assess and determine how they want to approach things,” said Greencorn.

He said the city will provide links on its website related to that kind of question about where residents can go to get help with their own plumbing concerns. The federal government also has a basic guide that includes some advice on testing and fixes.

Hendriksen said just as the city is taking responsibility for its facilities, residents are responsible for any testing and subsequent work that might be required in their homes.