A number of St. Albert city councillors were surprised to learn nearly half of the city’s drinking water pipes are made with asbestos cement, as recently revealed.
Asbestos cement, as the name implies, contains asbestos, which is a naturally occurring group of carcinogenic fibres known to cause cancer when inhaled. Although the federal government banned the use, manufacture, sale, and import of asbestos in 2018, Health Canada says asbestos cement doesn’t pose a danger to drinking water.
Coun. Wes Brodhead said in an interview he was unaware the city had asbestos cement water pipes, but thought if there was cause for concern the city would have known before the report.
“We’ll do the work necessary to make sure that we fully understand what’s going on in our community, but I believe that our water is safe to drink,” Brodhead said. “By all standards that the government currently asks us to test to, our water’s fine.”
“The word ‘asbestos,’ everybody starts to twitch … because nobody wants to start breathing asbestos, so I understand everybody’s concerned about it. But apparently airborne fibres and waterborne are two different things.”
Likewise, Coun. Mike Killick told the Gazette as long as Health Canada’s guidelines say asbestos cement water pipes don’t affect the safety of drinking water, residents shouldn’t be concerned.
“I was glad that St. Albert actually provided information, so it’s good that we know where we have those pipes,” Killick said. “Based on Canada Health guidelines, it doesn’t look like asbestos in cement pipe for delivering drinking water poses a problem to residents’ health.”
As the Gazette previously reported, Health Canada says that ingestion of asbestos through drinking water poses little to no threat to human health and the government currently does not require municipalities to test drinking water for asbestos.
“The toxicological profile of asbestos fibres depends heavily on the route of exposure; inhalation exposure is associated with the most concern,” the a 2021 report read. “Although the data on adverse effects following ingestion are less clear, the overall weight of evidence from available epidemiology and animal studies does not suggest an increased risk of cancer following ingestion of asbestos in drinking water.”
In an email, the city’s senior manager of utilities Regan Lefebvre confirmed St. Albert does not test for asbestos in drinking water, although there were two asbestos cement pipe breaks in the city last year.
“With no provincial regulatory requirement for asbestos, the City of St. Albert does not test for asbestos,” Lefebvre said. “If guidelines from Health Canada were to change, the City of St. Albert would ensure it was following any updated direction accordingly.”
Lefebvre did say the city has “several” projects planned to replace some of the asbestos cement pipes in St. Albert, however the projects will replace under two total kilometres of pipe and are being replaced as part of larger infrastructure projects.
According to the city’s estimate, replacing all 137 kilometres of asbestos cement pipe would cost about $411 million. The city’s entire 2023 operating budget is about $235.6 million.
“That’s an astronomical number,” Coun. Shelley Biermanski said, referring to the $411 million estimate. “More than we’d ever be able to collect in taxes in several lifetimes.”
As the city is not planning to replace all of the asbestos cement pipe, Biermanski said it would be inappropriate to comment further on the feasibility of such a project.
“I would hate to think that that expense would ever come to anyone,” she said. “That would be insane.”