HALIFAX—Halifax Water’s plan to pay to replace homeowners’ lead pipes — the first of its kind in Canada — has cleared its first hurdle.

The public utility cited the Tainted Water investigation into lead in drinking water — a national collaboration between universities and media outlets across Canada, including Star Halifax, Global News, the University of King’s College and Concordia University’s Institute for Investigative Journalism — in the proposal to its board of commissioners on Thursday.

The board approved the plan, tacking on an amendment from commissioner Ted Farquhar setting “2039 or sooner” as the utility’s new goal to be lead free, rather than 2050.

If the new plan is approved by the utility’s regulator, Halifax Water will spend $10.5 million more on replacing lead service lines on homeowners’ property — potentially increasing their water rates in the short term. But the extra spending will save Halifax Water money in the long term because it will have more control over when it replaces lead service lines on public property, avoiding costly paving work.

The Tainted Water investigation revealed that nearly a third of tap water tests conducted by Halifax Water since 2012 have exceeded the national guideline for lead. The report to the board said the calls jumped from two per day to 100, and web traffic spiked more than 200 per cent in the days following.

“It was the response to the recent articles in the Star and in Global News about lead, literally our call and our website volume exploded over night,” director of water services Reid Campbell told the board during Thursday’s meeting.

Using that public response as a catalyst, the plan is to replace every one of the estimated 2,000 public and 3,500 private lead service lines in the city by 2039 at a total cost of about $38.5 million. That’s 24 years before the pipes would be replaced if Halifax Water continued with the status quo (a 25-per-cent rebate for homeowners) and well ahead of its stated goal of being lead free by 2050.

The proposal will now go to the province’s utility and review board for approval. Campbell said that could happen by the end of 2020.

“We’d like to get it done as quickly as possible,” he said after the meeting.

If the plan is approved, Campbell said Halifax Water will develop a triage program. While most of the pipes replaced will coincide with municipal paving projects, when streets are being torn up anyway, the utility will also target homes with the highest lead levels in their water and buildings with people most at risk of lead exposure, like daycares.

Darren Jordan lives in a home in South End Halifax with his wife and two young children. Jordan knew he had a lead service line in the home when he bought it, so he had a filtration system installed to protect his family.

“It’s something I’ve always heard of. Any amount of lead is an unsafe amount and it builds up over time,” he said in an interview Thursday.

“With two small kids, definitely something I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot.”

Jordan has never sought a quote for replacing the pipes, which can cost $10,000 or more and runs about $4,000 on average, but he was happy to hear about Halifax Water’s new plan.

“I think it’s a good idea,” he said.

Campbell said there’s no “direct precedent” in Canada for paying for 100 per cent of homeowners’ lead service line replacements. Other Canadian cities pay some of the cost — 60 per cent in Saskatoon, for example — but no other city pays the full cost of replacing the line from the water main under the street to the meter inside the home.

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This is the direction other utilities are headed, Campbell said, and he pointed to Indiana’s private American Water utility as an example of a similar program in the United States.

“The issue, largely due to Flint, has been brought to the fore a little earlier in the United States, so we’re aware of a handful of utilities … that have taken a similar approach,” he said.

Marc Edwards, an environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech and an international expert in drinking water safety who helped expose the crisis in Flint, Mich., called Halifax Water’s proposal a “breakthrough.”

“Once one domino falls and a city is taking the moral and financial responsibility … others will see the wisdom and logic,” he said in an interview Thursday.

“After all, they’re in a public health, public service field. They are not private, profit-minded companies. They have a privileged position to do the right thing on behalf of their customers to achieve the best solution for the community.”

Over the past year, municipal water operators across the country repeatedly told reporters that municipal responsibility for lead pipes stops at the property line. Any pipes beyond that point are the sole responsibility of homeowners.

That argument, Edwards said, is indefensible.

“I’ve never understood why they invested so much time and energy arguing it was someone else’s problem,” Edwards said.

“I think it’s worth noting that morally and legally, those lead pipes are there, not by the choice of the consumer, but because of the laws in place at the time.”

If it proceeds, the Halifax Water initiative could place a moral obligation on other municipalities in Canada and beyond, Edwards said.

“I feel that it was inevitable that at some point someone would do the right thing. Utilities are just losing so much credibility and trust with the public at a tremendous cost. I hope that this is going to set a precedent, not just for Canada, but for America, too.”

With files from the Toronto Star’s Robert Cribb and Global News’ Ross Lord

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