In its ongoing efforts to be innovative and trend setting, the City of Thunder Bay has inaugurated an exciting new lottery – Lotto Nightmare Pipe Dream. The price of admission is simply being a property owner in the City of Thunder Bay and there is an annual top up fee known as a property tax. To win? You have to have a copper pipe leak either in your home plumbing or – if you are a really big winner – in the city water feed line to your property. The prize? Well, the prizes range from 0$ - not winning - to up to minus $30,000 dollars or more depending on how big a winner you are. The odds of claiming a prize are unknown but you can win from anywhere in the city though apparently the odds go up if you are lucky enough to live in the Northwood or Red River Wards.
Needless to say, the epidemic of leaky pipes in Thunder Bay in the wake of the introduction of sodium hydroxide to mitigate lead in the water has become the lottery from hell. Despite what might be considered to be the comforting biblical allusion of having a Mayor and 12 Councillors gathered in perpetual Monday evening supper time council meetings presiding over our welfare, they continue to remain silent on the issue with no prospect of the good news of salvation in sight. Yet, based on the Facebook membership numbers in the Thunder Bay Leaky Pipe Club as well as numerous local media stories, nearly 1500 households have been affected. The demonstration this week by affected residents is evidence of the growing problem. And, the numbers will likely grow given that it is quite probable that all pipes in the city have probably had decades of life removed from them by the introduction of sodium hydroxide. So, even homes in newer subdivisions can probably expect to see cases in years to come.
The Mayor and Council are refusing to make any public comment. They are not even saying if they are studying the issue or collecting data or have hired a water/environmental consulting firm to advise them on the issue. Simply saying absolutely nothing – which is what the Mayor did at his virtual town hall this week - because of potential legal issues is outrageous given that these are our elected representatives. There needs to be accountability here – not just by the City of Thunder Bay- but also by the province which has mandated municipalities to take action on lead corrosion but oddly enough has not provided for a uniform approach to the problem. However, the province has been reported as stating other cities use sodium hydroxide with no pinhole leak issues suggesting they are washing their hands of the matter. However, at least one of the cities mentioned by the province in the news report– Ottawa – does not seem to use sodium hydroxide but phosphates as its lead corrosion approach.
So, It turns out other cities have also had a lead problem – Toronto and Hamilton for example – but both dealt with it by introducing phosphates into the water supply. In Toronto’s case phosphate was introduced in 2014 and was even endorsed by Toronto Public Health – to my knowledge there was no endorsement by public health officials in Thunder Bay for adding sodium hydroxide. If there was, I would like to see it. Hamilton approved the use of orthophosphate in 2015. Phospates apparently have a long history of use in the UK and along with Toronto and Hamilton, Sudbury and Winnipeg also use it also for lead corrosion control purposes.
Where does this leave us? In Thunder Bay, there are always more questions than answers and the silence of the mayor and council does not help us out at all. Why did Thunder Bay opt for sodium hydroxide rather than phosphates in treating its water for lead corrosion? Was it a cost issue – that is, we opted for a cheaper chemical? Was it a water composition issue based on the chemical nature of our existing water supply given that it comes from Lake Superior that necessitated using sodium hydroxide rather than phosphates? Is adding phosphate a solution to our water issues given that there is at least one example of a community in North America – Folsum, California of Folsum Prison Blues fame - adding it to their water to stop pinhole leaks. We need answers and sooner rather than later. Thunder Bay’s new lottery is not all it is cracked up to be.
