BY Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman & Megan Mills-Devoe
Megan Schmidt has lived on Parc-La Fontaine Ave. for seven years and has been aware all the while of the lead in her water. With her two-year-old daughter, Clara, now running around her rented apartment, the issue has taken on new urgency.
“You can make an effort to use a Brita filter and use Brita water to boil, for everything,” she says. “But it’s definitely not great, especially since having a kid, knowing that I can’t control the water she’s drinking from the sink or the bath.”
In the summer of 2025, the City of Montreal announced that it was pushing back its deadline to replace lead pipes by eight years, from 2032 to 2040.
Lead is especially dangerous for children under six years old, as it can cause neurodevelopmental issues. While adults are less vulnerable, long-term exposure can affect blood pressure.
Megan Schmidt and her daughter Clara, in their apartment in Montreal. Schmidt has lived there for seven years and is always careful to filter the water she uses to reduce lead concentration. Photo by Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman.
On Schmidt’s street, about half the homes have lead pipes. Many residents know they might have lead in their water, and most use filters.
Anais Gonzalez lives down the street from Schmidt with her mother and 18-month-old daughter. She admits she doesn’t know what the side effects of lead are, nor how dangerous it is.
“It’s really shocking,” she says about the eight-year delay. “When you announce news, it should be because you’ve done a study that allowed you to set a timeline. If you tell me it will take a year longer, okay, I understand, because there are always challenges.”
Anais Gonzalez and her 18-month-old daughter, Gaïa. While Gonzalez is careful to drink filtered water, she unsure what the side effects of lead exposure can be. Photo by Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman.
This opinion is shared by Martin Danyluk, who teaches about urban planning and infrastructure at Concordia University.
“It says to me that the city government does not prioritize the health and well-being of the residents of Montreal,” he says. “The fact that we have a known toxin in our waters that is damaging to children and causes long-term disease and cognitive problems… To me, it’s shameful.”
Many Montreal residents are concerned over trace amounts of lead in their tap water. Should they be? Here’s what the experts have to say. Video by Megan Mills Devoe.
Montreal’s lead problem
The presence of lead in Montreal’s water is due to the historical use of lead solders in the service lines that bring water to homes.
In 2019, the City of Montreal announced an action plan to replace these service lines after an investigation by Concordia’s Institute of Investigative Journalism, Le Devoir and Global News. It revealed that earlier studies had under-estimated the amount of lead in Quebec’s water.
According to the municipal government’s latest annual report on lead, the City has never met its yearly goal of replacing 5,000 pipes — the closest it came was in 2021, when it replaced 3,865. In 2024, 1,839 pipes were replaced.
It cited increased costs and reduced social acceptability of road constructions as some of the reasons for the delay.
Number of lead service line replacements per year in Montreal. Infographic by Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman.
Karine Venne, a chemist working for Montreal forensic engineering firm Pyrotech BEI, explains that lead pipes are concentrated in Montreal’s older houses.
“It’s only in the houses and the areas where the houses were built in the 40s and 50s and in the 70s,” she says. “Since then, there’s no lead in the solders anymore.”
For people who have lead in their pipes, Venne highlights the importance of chemically removing or diminishing the concentration of lead before drinking water. Boiling water will not help remove it but something as simple as running the water for a few seconds until it runs cold could lower the lead concentration.
“[If] you leave in the morning and you come back right after work, or after school, then the water has been in the pipes for the whole day,” Venne explains. “If you have lead in your solder in the house, then the concentration of lead will be higher, because slowly the lead will leach into the water.”
“Of course, running the water all the time is not something feasible. That’s why the most recommended way [to lower the lead concentration] is to use a filter,” she adds. “There’s a gazillion filters on the market, and there’s a lot of companies selling tons of types of filters. So you need to make sure that it’s certified.”
Karine Venne using a new microscope at Montreal forensic engineering firm Pyrotech BEI. Photo by Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman.
The DRSP considers risks associated with lead in Montreal’s water to be weak, but advises residents with lead pipes to drink filtered water nonetheless.
According to Venne, the problem of lead in Montreal has received too much “hype.” She points out that Montrealers are exposed to much lower levels of lead than before.
“A lot of lead products have been banned since the 70s,” she says. “Gas was with lead before. Paints were with lead before. […] Our parents were exposed to a lot more lead than my generation.”
Some of Schmidt and Gonzalez’s neighbours share this philosophy. One 50-year-old resident says he was aware of the presence of lead in his water, but didn’t think it was important enough to use a filter.
Another resident, Bernard Pepin, who has lived in his house on Parc-La Fontaine Ave. since 1976, isn’t bothered by the delays announced by the city. “It doesn’t worry me, because we don’t drink the tap water,” opting instead for filtered water, he explains.
Less lead… more cones
With a new party elected to run Montreal city hall at the end of 2025, lead remains on the municipality’s to-do list.
Alan DeSousa, executive committee member in charge of mobility and infrastructure, says it is still too early for the administration to change the approach to lead.
“It hasn’t been possible to increase the pace significantly in 2026,” he said. “The measures we plan on implementing aim to create concrete results in 2027.”
To Martin Danyluk, this delay boils down to the municipal government’s priorities.
“I don’t buy the claim that it’s the inconvenience of closing the streets that is what’s holding up this process,” he says. “I’m sure it’s a technically challenging process to replace all these pipes. But if it were a priority for the government, they would be investing what is needed to make it happen.”
Cost of lead service line replacements per year in Montreal. Infographic by Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman.
According to him, the problem of lead highlights Montreal’s “striking” infrastructure gap; investment is needed to meet basic standards and needs.
“It creates safety hazards, obviously,” says Danyluk. “In the worst case, it can create collapses and tragedies. In other cases, it can create more slow, subtle forms of harm, like lead trickling into people’s homes.”
Distribution of lead pipe in Montreal. Map by Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman.
But infrastructure change isn’t without its pains. Alan DeSousa’s focus has recently gone to fixing potholes in the city, and Ferrada has gone on the attack against construction site planning, declaring in a press conference that “orange cones cannot be the symbol of Montreal.”
In order to increase the efficiency of construction around lead pipe replacement, DeSousa says the administration plans to ask boroughs to prioritize road repairs in places where pipe replacement is needed.
“By targeting these sectors and integrating lead replacement to road work, we will be able to control costs while increasing the pace of the interventions,” he says.
But on Parc-La Fontaine Ave., a high-traffic street on the Plateau Mont-Royal, residents are ready for the inconvenience this construction might cause.
“We’re pretty used to it,” says Anais Gonzalez. “Part of me will be annoyed at the inconvenience, but another part of me will understand.”
“[We] would not be very happy about the traffic and the lack of parking and the street in front of us, but I think it’s a necessity that you can’t really avoid,” says Megan Schmidt.
For now, many Montrealers will continue to rely on filters to shield them from the impacts of lead, as the end of the problem remains over a decade away.
