Four years ago, Rhonda Hanah bought a 1940s house in Thunder Bay with a wide deck, large bay windows that let light into the dining room and 21 metres of lead pipe underground.Reporters, working as part of a national collaboration of more than 120 journalists from nine universities and 10 media organizations, including the Toronto Star and the Institute for Investigative Journalism, tested in January when lead levels are more likely to be low, and Hanah’s home tested at 11.8 parts per billion — twice the national guideline of 5 ppb.City tests dating back to 2002 show consistently high levels of lead in Hanah’s previous and current Thunder Bay homes. Among the results: 38 ppb in 2008, 21.3 ppb in 2015, 13.5 ppb in 2016 and 10.2 ppb last year. “When I moved to the city in the 80s...I didn’t know about lead,” says the 54-year-old artist. “Even though we’re in a city that has a lead problem, there’s very little awareness of lead.”Removing lead plumbing — pipes and fixtures — is the only reliable way to eliminate the risk of lead in drinking water. The logistics, though, are complicated and the cost well beyond what local governments can bear.And that means the costs often fall to homeowners. In smaller municipalities facing shrinking tax bases as local businesses close and young families leave to follow jobs, the problem falls to seniors and those who can’t afford several thousand dollars to dig up the pipes. Lead pipes are ubiquitous in Thunder Bay, where provincial data show 203 exceedances of the federal guideline over the past two years — 31 per cent of all tests. “I absolutely worry about it,” says Tony Santos, manager of compliance and quality control for the city’s water system. “I worry about it every minute. That’s my job. The lead service connections are our downfall.”City records show that about 10,000 of Thunder Bay’s homes have l ...
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