City looking for volunteers to test lead levels in potable water

The City of Portage la Prairie is hoping homeowners will be willing to allow the city to test their potable water for lead levels.

The city is required to have samples from 40 different houses throughout Portage for the test. Chair of the Waterworks Committee Faron Nicholls says they have some homeowners who volunteered last year who weren't able to be tested, but they'll need new volunteers as well.

"It's a great program in terms of giving us information regarding where it may be, where it's contained, where it's localized, and how we need to deal with it, in terms of flushing your systems if required." explains Nicholls. "It's a required program (for the City), but it's also great information."

According to the city's 2022 lead testing, 28 per cent of the 42 samples were above the guideline limit of 0.005 mg/L. After five minutes of flushing the water, however, the number of samples above that limit dropped to zero.

"The city's divided into a bunch of different sections," notes Nicholls. "What we'll do is we'll get names and places from the whole cross section of the city, and those will be the ones we'll work with."

While unsure of when exactly the results would be submitted to the city, he believes they'll be informed sometime this coming fall.