Regina City Council has approved a plan that would see all city-owned lead water connections be replaced by 2025.
There are 3,600 remaining lead connections operated by the city, and each one would cost roughly $12,000. However, the city says the money would come out of the utility budget, with likely some of it coming from reserves.
Mayor Michael Fougere said the city would like to see the lead connections changed as soon as possible.
“I want to stress that we have lead-free water in our system as it comes into the city, this is only the remaining 5% that has lead in it, and we have to test to see where exactly those are located,” Fougere said. “We know where the city lead connections are, we’re not sure on the private owner side because we don’t keep those records.”
While council has said there will not be an increase to property tax as a result of this, Fougere said there may not be an increase to utilities either, depending on utility reserves.
“I hesitate to say because I don’t know what we have in the reserves for example, and I don’t know what that means for actual fees per year, but it will have an impact either by reserves or by the rates.”
If you own a lead residential service line in the City of Regina, you may be required to replace it some time in the next five years.
Fougere said he is in favour of making residential side lead connection replacements mandatory.
“I think if we say to (residential property owners) ‘either pay for it in whole or we will help you pay for it immediately and pay it back over time,’ we’ll have that discussion,” Fougere said. “I think it should be mandatory to clean this up because they may move and the next person coming in may have the same problem, so I think we need to make sure we get this cleared up.”
Each residential connection costs approximately $6,000. It is not known the exact amount of residential lead service connections remaining in the city.
