Turns Out There Is Lead in Montreal Water

Apparently there really is lead in our pipes and the onus of responsibility is on homeowners to deal with it. To be clear, Montreal itself has a lead in the pipes advisory. They have some French PDFs outlining their plan on fixing their part of it. I scanned those quickly to see what was in there. Standard city-study stuff.

Full disclosure, I'm not a scientist, plumber or urban city planner (though I do geek on urban development). I’m also not a journalist. I like to think of myself as a simplifier. I can read complex topics and turn them into regular English.

That being said, I’m not doing extensive research for this piece. I mostly was shocked to find out Neal M. was correct, there is in fact lead in the water. 

We may have grown up drinking lead in Montreal

This whole lead pipes in Montreal project kicked off in 2004. Someone in Ville Saint-Laurent found high levels of lead in their water. There was a plan of action made in 2007 and then the city was inefficient, they fixed one third of the pipes affected by 2019. 

Now Valerie is there and made this study on the project. They revised the plan, then revised it again in 2021 and 2022.  They created PDF reports summarising what they are going to do and what has been done in the last few years. 

I was born in 1987, they only discovered this problem when I was 15. They still haven’t fixed the problem. I remember a whole lot of Montrealers up in arms over Flint’s drinking water situation. So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw we had our own lead in the water fiasco underway. To be fair, corrupt city officials in Montreal did not neglect to add minerals that create crust linings on lead pipes to the water, so there are differences.

Now the issue is apparently not in the city’s infrastructure. The issue lies in the pipes that connect homes to the city water supply. Apparently the government believes that the amount of lead in the water is safe, so it’s not a huge biggie. They also acknowledge low risk is still a risk. 

If you live in a building with more than 8 apartments, you are safe from the lead. That means most schools and bigger buildings would never know of this issue. There is a tiny chance that lead pipes were used in water fountains but they studied the lead levels in children and found no significant increase due to school. So we can safely nix the protection of the kids in school as part of this conversation.

I guess this means I didn’t grow up with lead as we were far too poor to own a home. The more affluent folk probably drank some lead though.

Dealing with lead pipes

I can see why replacing pipes is a slow process. I found this epic sales video from a company that sells machines to replace lead pipes. The music they used is so over the top. I highly recommend watching with sound on. 

Seeing that video makes a 2032 timeline feel a lot less sinister. I promise anyone reading this, the snow removal budget for bike paths in NDG, would barely touch the construction costs involved in dealing with pipes. I’ll be honest, I don’t actually know how much anything costs. Alex Montagano says the snow removal budget is not public information. But my theory is pushing stuff above ground is cheaper than tearing up dirt to replace one metal pipe with another. 

Also the private contractors who built those homes were aware lead was bad when they built those homes. Apparently even in ancient times, people knew lead was bad. But bureaucrats and taxes be what they are. Everyone wants safety but no one wants to pay for it. I guess at some point legislation kicked in, quick internetting says the 1970s. 

So chances are a lot of homeowners, with homes built before the 70s have lead pipes. And because no one cared about lead pipes, no one checked for lead pipes. The city is then stuck with this reality of potentially dangerous lead pipes, but arguably it’s not really their fault. This isn’t even a strictly local issue:

There are filters that filter out lead. According to 6 seconds on Home Depot’s website, we’re talking under 500$. Maybe the city should give them out for free, but as a non homeowner, I can see how the city has a point saying this is your problem. I can also see how as a citizen, this should be something the city deals with out of a desire to help its citizens.

Imagine having to be like, “Yo bro, you got a lead filter in place or do I need bottled water”. 

The homeowner is now also responsible for replacing the private portion of their pipes. Should they be? I don’t know, but my brain is racing enough that it may just be tomorrow’s blog topic. 

Is the lead pipes in Montreal a concern?

Actually yeah, according to the news. Now the issue is that unlike somewhere from Flint, the water from the city flows pure. My building is too big for lead pipes, so I get me some nice clean H20. Now if you have lead pipes leading from the city supply to your crib, it actually could be as bad as Flint, Michigan.

The real scary part is no one even knew until 2004 and no one really cared until Valerie Plante (I mean I could be wrong on that, maybe you cared 12 years ago but did nothing?). 

The real talk of the issue is that people can temporarily patch the issue with a filter. People who own homes should do a lead screening and deal with it appropriately. The other side of it is, it appears private contractors hired by civilians trying to save money created this problem. I suppose the homes built by the city for stuff like veteran housing should be the city’s problem to deal with by the logic I’m presenting. 

I do not think the city (my tax dollars) should be fronting the burden of your grandpa’s decision to be cheap. People have known about lead poisoning since the old days. Lead lobbyists did their thing the way big milk helped make your children sugar fiends off of candy cereal. 

As always, I’m wasting my time with verbose talk to provoke thought and get you to care more about city issues. We have an election next year.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone