Portland, Ore., to flush reservoir because of teen’s urine

[yortsed snacilbuper]

PORTLAND, Ore. — The mix of 38 million gallons of treated water and one teen’s urine has proven unacceptable to Portland officials who plan to flush away the whole lot — the second time in less than three years the city has gone to such lengths to keep its water pure.

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[agent46]

1. Okay, I'll bite.

No one is that stupid, especially during a period of widespread regional drought. What's the real reason? Where is the money trail?

[Arugula Latte]

7. The Bull Run (Mt. Hood) reservoirs are at capacity

so there isn't a water shortage here. 100+ million gallons of water flows down towards the sea every day.

It seems like it is a huge overkill, but there is only so much water that can be held at one time, so I guess they're thinking "out with the old and peed-up and in with the new and fresh."

[Warpy]

2. Bureaucratic overkill

I hope the guys at the water treatment plant overrule this idiot. After all, reservoirs above ground already have plenty of bird shit and squirrel piss going into them. We treat surface water with chlorine to kill anything living in them. Some places also filter particulates out.

Surface water is not going to be pure, period.

We have groundwater here and the military has been found polluting it. Big news today is that the military's solution was to dilute the plume with more of our scarce and expensive water. Thank goodness the city told them to go shove that idea. I ran into the same thing when I lived on Cape Cod, dilution was tried, and all it did was poison several town wells.

[oldhippie]

10. What I found amazing ...

Was that this reservoir held POST TREATMENT water. It goes from there directly to the distribution mains to customers. I thought that must be a reporting error but apparently it's true. Think of the terrorism possibilities. I heard on the radio this morning that there are several dozen reservoir holding post treated water in the area. Ugh!

[Warpy]

11. Yeah, yuck.

Transmission of disease from bird shit is fairly rare but it exists.

They need to cover that thing.

[Chuuku Davis]

3. Obviously there is no

Bird,fish, raccoon, otter, deer, etc piss and shit in there

This is one of the stupidest things I have EVER heard of

[pipi_k]

6. That's one of

the first things I thought of when I saw a photo of that storage facility.

it's open to the air.

huh.

I wonder how they keep the birds from shitting in it.

But whatever...maybe critter crap is better tasting than human pee...

[Jgarrick]

4. Homeopathists strike again!

[pinboy3niner]

5. You mean when it's refilled it will still have urine memory?

[arely staircase]

8. +1 nt

[Arugula Latte]

9. "Memories, light the corners of my mind

Misty yellow-colored memories
Of the time some dude peed in me on Mt. Tabor ..."

[Jenoch]

12. I heard somewhere that this sort of 'post treatment'

reservoir without a cover is going to be phased out within three years. A little bit of hukan urine in 38 MILLION gallons of water is a perception problem, not a healty problem. If they have so much abundant water flowing through their system, then why are they still using an open air reservoir that was built in 1916?