THUNDER BAY — City officials say the municipality continues to work at reducing the number of lead water lines and updating the local inventory of where they are.
According to the city’s 2024 drinking water quality annual report, there are still an estimated 5,586 publicly-owned and 7,818 privately-owned lead service connections as part of the city’s water distribution system. Publicly-owned connections are those on or under city-owned lands, such as roads and sidewalks; privately-owned connections are the part of the line that’s on or under private property.
“We've been working really hard to get the publicly-owned lead service lines replaced whenever we're doing watermain work on a street,” said Michelle Warywoda, the City of Thunder Bay’s director of environment.
“If there are lead service lines, we'll replace them up to the property line and then we're encouraging homeowners to replace the privately-owned side.”
Last year, the report said 135 publicly-owned lead services were replaced. Warywoda said that the initial number was much higher than the just-over 5,500 the city is at currently — she estimated anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000.
Warywoda said municipalities started to really look into lead service line replacement around 2007 when, what is now called the provincial Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, launched a plan to address the presence of lead in water.
If too much lead enters the human body, it can pose a significant health risk, particularly to children and pregnant women. According to city’s recent water quality report it enters the drinking water supply by leaching from lead service pipes.
Lead pipes were used prior to the mid-1950s to connect a building’s plumbing to the watermain or from lead solder, which was used to connect pipes prior to the 1990s, the report said. Some older household fixtures, such as faucets and valves, may also be made of leaded brass.
The city sets aside about $1 million each year to do what Warywoda called “priority lead replacement.” That’s where a property owner has gotten their part of a lead service line replaced up to the property line before the city has done their part. In those cases, she said, the city will use that funding to prioritize the municipality replacing its section, even if the road itself isn’t yet slated for watermain work that year.
City hall also has financial assistance programs available for property owners to help offset the costs of replacing the privately-owned portion of water lines. In 2024, the water quality report said, the city received 23 applications and 20 loans were issued.
The city portion of all lead service lines are replaced when road and watermain work is done on a specific street, Warywoda said.
The work plan for 2025 calls for road and watermain work to be done on five city streets in older areas of town where lead lines are present, she added.
“Understandably, if we had all the money in the world, we could get it done quicker right?” Warywoda said. “But we're working within our budgets.”
The city also provides free lead testing to residents.
City staff, Warywoda said, are also working to update the city’s inventory of where these lead connections are, adding that it’s an ongoing process, particularly with the privately-owned connections where permits may not have been taken out or older records not properly kept.
“The records are getting better and better, and we continually are fine tuning them,” she said. “So, as we get information back from our staff out in the field (and) from say, plumbers in homes … we're continually updating those records to be the best as possible.”
“Over time, they'll just get better.”
