Kitimat faces ongoing water woes as residents call for main replacement
District of Kitimat grapples with murky water and aging infrastructure issues
The District of Kitimat announced a major disruption to water services in the Service Centre neighbourhood due to a damaged water main on Thursday.
In a press release, the District of Kitimat said that repairs were anticipated to last until late Thursday and that residents should run their taps until the water runs clear.
Local Kitimat residents say that the problems are not just in Service Centre.
Last month, residents of Skeena Street appeared before Kitimat City Council to discuss ongoing problems with their water.
Residents said that, despite doing their due diligence, including replacing water lines that connect their homes to the municipal water system, their water was still discoloured and unusable.
Kitimat City Council said that it was looking at several solutions to the issue, including looping the water main to nearby Columbia Street, relining the corroding pipes and installing an auto-flusher.
“I want to express my opinion that the looping system, or any of these other options — other than the complete water main replacement — is a bandaid solution," said Skeena Street resident Tim Carter.
“I think that the state of our main is such that is has reached the end of it’s life,” Carter said.
Carter stressed that the only viable option is a complete replacement of the water main. The replacement is estimated to cost $2.75 million.
In a statement to The Skeena Reporter, District of Kitimat Communications Manager Cameron Orr said that the district doesn’t know the exact date the problems started.
"We do know it has been a number of years,” Orr said.
There have been other reports of discoloured water around Kitimat for a number of different reasons, including flooding and water main flushing.
This year, water main flushing began in April and ran through June.
During water main flushing, residents have been told to expect brown water and to run their taps until it clears. People are also advised against using hot water when experiencing discoloured water.
Other types of water advisories have also become a more common occurrence, as the District of Kitimat's aging water system ages past its best-before date.
The District of Kitimat hopes that a $8.25 million water system update will curb those advisories, but the new system only addresses water conditioning, direct sand filtration, and UV disinfection.
Earlier this year, I reported on the presence of asbestos concrete (AC) pipes in the District of Kitimat's water system in another local new outlet.
In the 1940s and 1950s, asbestos fibres were added to the cement that made up a majority of water pipes across Canada, making the solution popular and widespread.
While the science on inhaling asbestos fibres is settled, it’s less clear whether ingesting or drinking water with asbestos is hazardous. There is a growing body of research that suggests ingesting fibres as pipes decay could elevate the risk of stomach and other gastrointestinal-related cancers.
A 2017 study on ingested asbestos suggested that ingested asbestos fibres “seem able to act as a co-carcinogen agent,” adding that there were “toxic effects on the stomach,” among other areas of the body.
On the other hand, Health Canada disagrees with that assessment.
Earlier this year, Health Canada released a statement that noted “there is no conclusive evidence that ingested asbestos is hazardous.”
Compared to the U.S., Canada’s federal policy falls behind in regulating asbestos fibres in drinking water — and, in Kitimat, its local government remains oblivious of asbestos levels in its water system, as it doesn't test for it.
In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enacted regulations in 1992 requiring public drinking water systems be at or below a maximum level of asbestos contamination. The EPA’s U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act limits asbestos to seven million fibres per litre, with the EPA’s National Primary Drinking Water Regulations stating that higher concentrations consumed over extended periods caused an “increased risk of developing benign intestinal polyps (growths).”
Residents have also repeatedly raised concerns that flakes of lead paint from the Old Haisla Bridge have been leaching into the Kitimat River. Earlier this year, the Old Haisla Bridge was replaced amid concerns over its structural integrity and the growing amount of industrial traffic going to and from LNG Canada’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the city.
When the Old Haisla Bridge was still in use, it was commonplace to witness flakes of paint and other debris falling into the Kitimat River, which is upstream from the city’s water intake.