The City of Sarnia has launched the second year of its lead reduction program.
City employees started visiting homes within the "lead zone" boundary, from the St. Clair River east to Murphy Road and Highway 402 south to St. Andrew Street, last summer.
Director of Engineering David Jackson said the goal is to collect water samples at the remaining properties this year.
"We've modified our process due to COVID-19," said Jackson. "Last year we would schedule an appointment and we would go inside the individual person's home and take the sample, but due to concern about not going into people's homes, this year we're actually going to sample at the outside tap."
A notice with detailed information will be sent to homes requiring a sample.
"Rather than schedule individual appointments, we plan to target entire streets at a time and so we'll provide a notice to blocks of the city that will be coming in a couple weeks, giving people the opportunity to opt-out if they don't want their water tested. If they do, we will come and go down the street and sample each house as we go."
In 2019, 2,000 samples were collected from approximately 8,700 suspect properties.
"We completed the 2,000 samples last year, and then also just looking at our files and paperwork we've eliminated another 1,000. So we have approximately 5,000 properties left. We're hoping with this new method that we'll be much more efficient and so, while our original plan was that we'd have two years left, we're hoping we can complete all of them this year."
Only two per cent of the properties tested in 2019 exceeded the Ontario Drinking Water Standard of 10 micrograms of lead per litre of water.
