Man pees in reservoir; City flushes 8M gallons
Portland, Ore., is a notoriously rainy city, and apparently there is plenty of drinking water to go around, too. / Craig Mitchelldyer/Getty Images
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Call it the big flush.
Because a 21-year-old man was caught on a security camera urinating into a city reservoir, Oregon's biggest city is sending 8 million gallons of treated drinking water down the drain.
Portland officials defended the decision Monday, saying they didn't want to send city residents water laced, however infinitesimally, with urine.
Public health officials say, however, that urine is sterile in healthy people and that the urine in the reservoir was so diluted -- perhaps a half pint in millions of gallons -- that it posed little risk.
Man caught on tape peeing in reservoir doesn't understand all the fuss
Some people in the city, in the suburbs and around the world called the flush an overreaction, especially since animals such as ducks contribute waste routinely and, sometimes, die in the water.
"More than 1 billion people worldwide do not have reliable access to clean drinking water, and here we are tossing away nearly 8 million gallons of water just to appease the ignorant residents who believe their tap water will otherwise turn yellow," read one comment posted on The Oregonian's Website.
Water from the city's five open air reservoirs, all in parks, goes directly to customers. The reservoirs are due to be replaced by underground storage within a decade, a result of federal requirements.
The reservoirs distribute water that flows from glaciers on Mount Hood. It is treated before it goes to the reservoirs for distribution, and then goes directly to consumers.
The reservoirs are drained twice a year for cleaning, and workers have found animal carcasses, paint cans, construction material, fireworks debris and even the plastic bags people use to scoop up after their dogs, said David Shaff, administrator of the city water bureau.
Even so, Shaff said, the yuck factor was the primary reason for the decision to drain the 8 million gallons, at a cost of less than $8,000 to treat it as sewage.
"Nobody wants to drink pee, and I don't want to deal with the 100 people who would be unhappy that I'm serving them pee in their water," he said. Shaff said the security cameras also showed something that's still unidentified was thrown in the water, heightening concern about potential risks.
City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who is in charge of the water bureau, defended the decision, citing a potential public health risk. He said he worried about the possibility of chlamydia or AIDS from blood in urine.
"I'm for taking the most conservative approach," he said.
Dr. Gary Oxman, the county health officer, said the risk was so close to nil that it falls in the "never say never" range. Even with the uncertainty over an object thrown in the water, "that's still a very small risk," he said.
The young man, Josh Seater, told KATU-TV he'd been drinking, was with friends and thought that the reservoir was a sewage treatment plant. He said he felt guilty instantly, and then security guards arrived.
"I knew I did wrong when I did it," he told the station.
In addition to the sewage charge, Shaff said, the flushed water is worth $28,000.
The Mount Hood watershed that supplies the city is brimming this spring, with 8 million gallons flowing through it about every half hour.
"If I lived in Texas, I might have had a different response," he said.
You've got a lot of power in the world, but have lost the actual sense of what's correct and what's not, you who are always trying to export your cardboard morals to the rest of the world, through your Hollywood pictures.
It would ashame me to explain here why the whole thing is that pathethic. Surf that web you almost live inside and learn something about how Mother Nature profits every living being activity for good.
I don't drink tap water so I'm not worried.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Let me guess. You drink bottled water. Most bottle water is just tap water.
I live in Portland and my water bill pays for that water. In fact I live in SE Portland so my taps are fed from that reservoir unlike the majority of the city residents who aren't even connected to that particular reservoir.
There's a couple things people ought to know before rushing to judgement.
1) The City of Portland has a combined water/sewer bill that is extremely high compared to other cities as a result of the "big pipe" project that is supposed to eliminate Combined Sewage Overflows. The Water Bureau has taken a huge amount of flack for this over the years, although it was a federally mandated pollution cleanup. Recently Homeland Security has started making a stink about the open reservoir situation so the city is going to have to replace those at 100 million dollars or so and as a result the water rates are going to jump again - people in the city are really, really POed now at the water bureau. Espically since the Water Bureau has been caught diverting water rate money to projects like restoring some old house, and installing bicycle paths, projects that are "pet projects" of the mayor and the city council.
This reservoir dump is part of a political campaign the water bureau has been engaged in to attempt to convince the citizens that they need to pay for the new covered reservoirs.
2) If you want to poison a water supply you can back-flush poison into a water supply from any tap since there are no backflow preventers in the system. It is not necessary to throw poison into the reservoir.
3) the guy they caught peeing in the reservoir is just the one they caught - you better believe that it's happened before where the guy didn't get caught. They have cameras on the reservoir but that area up there is a popular party spot. Lots of people party up there but the security does not bother them as long as they stay away from the reservoir. In fact they had a cop on the news the following day and the cop said if the guy had just peeed in a bush they wouldn't have even dispatched an officer up there.
4) The actual sequence of events was that the bureau shut the taps off right when the security picked up the guy peeing. The water dump occurred later and over several days. The local news crew was out there filming the next day and it was obvious the reservoir had quite a lot of floating debris in it already.
5) The water bureau will be able to charge the cleaning of the reservoir against the city liability fund because the claim will be that the guy who did the peeing will pay for it. However the guy is broke and has no job so for right now the city will pay for it. But, this allows the water bureau to shift the cost of a maintainence cycle on the reservoir out of it's budget. (so they can get more money to waste on more bike paths I guess)
In summary the reasons they flushed the reservoir really had nothing to do with the yuk factor and everything to do with political gain.