this seems like overkill.

Urine itself is sterile when it exits the body and chlorine would make it so that nothing would grow on any of the urea. Besides, the water is already full of stuff like bird shit and worse.

And yes, that kid is a complete asshole who should be forced to live with his parents with an ankle tracker to make sure he's only going to work or school until he manages to grow up. Otherwise the rest of his fellow citizens will make sure he never grows up.

He can serve as an example to his witless buddies.

and you you know it's practically impossible to clean something after one of them has peed in it.

rain. That's ignorant and wasteful.

Running our lives.

It's resolutions like this one that stoke the mind of the common citizen to ignore and dislike the bureaucrats who make these simple minded decisions.

Like they pump that water directly into the public water lines?? No way in hell.

No filtration after.

Not to mention an animals that wander up to it. Fencing may help, but the Interstates are fenced and look how many dead animals you see on the road.
Obviously if its already chlorinated that must take care of it, which means 1 guy pissing in it means nothing.

Leaking oil and gasoline, dumping stuff out of boats, doing god-knows-what else out there. Forgot to add: occasional dead body floats in from the river. Car from the 50's found submerged last year...I could go on...

are pretty gross if one goes digging about in them. Even the food we eat has x% of fecal matter in it from rodents, etc. Tomato juice has x% of maggots, etc. This kid's pee is so insignificant. I would be amazed if even with stringent sophisticated equipment it could be detected in 38 million gallons of water. Fish contribute far more and whatever else lives in the reservoir.

with too much power to make too many stupid decisions.

Right?

Portland doesn't filter. Their open reservoirs are finished water. It goes right into the pipes. Chlorine was already added.

water from a reservoir that only has chlorine added and then is pumped straight out to homes. I like a little more fuss and bother with my water, so I'm not drinking tiny chunks of dead guy and drowned bird. But YMMV.

This isn't a big raw water impoundment. It's basically a concrete pond in town. The natural raw water impoundment is far away in a protected from people area. Chlorine gets added before the water travels to town in pipes -before this reservoir. Then it goes into this reservoir and then back into the pipes.

I've never had chunks coming out of my faucet and it really is tasty water.

Admittedly, urine picks up some minimal microbial contamination on it's way through the lower urethra, but except in the case of UTIs, it's far cleaner than the water that was already in the reservoir. It has higher solute concentration, of course, but that's immediately diluted to homeopathic wet-dream levels. This is just dumb, IMO.

can test the man's urine for anything that might be contagious. Otherwise, what the hell are they worried about? And never mind that dirt, dead animals, animal shit, and all sorts of stuff are in that reservoir.

on occasions and lived to a long ripe old age.

it's got electrolytes.

The urine would be so diluted it would not effect anyone in a negative way.

Does water go directly from this open air reservoir into people's taps? I somehow doubt it.

Stupid to waste that water.

Portlandians must not care about all the other stuff that ends up in those open reservoirs (and if they are open, stuff is winding up in them) - so why the over-reaction to a few ounces of urine?

Is this just an administrator moment or did the citizens demand action?

hang on, nobody pees in the river before it gets to the reservoir? really?

onion at first.

That is insane.

“Right now we’ve got 100-plus million gallons of day free flowing down the river because the Bull Run reservoirs are as full as they can be,” he said. “I’ve got tons of water available that doesn’t have human pee in it, so I’m going to replace this.”

Doesnt even need to be pumped as the lake is higher than the reservoir.

They aren't that fussy.

We'll drink anything.

I hate to brag, but, damn, you would love it. It is so thirst quenching and it tastes like, well ... purity, freshness, and essence of new snowfall.

is worthy of a little urine.

An utter waste of water and money. Animals and birds put their waste in it every day.

38 million gallons at 1.27 per gallon comes out to $48,260,000.00 plus tax.

That's what the homeopathic nuts tell me anyways.

who wants to risk being turned into a slacker asshole?

I can now die a happy man.

There are quite a few of them down there.

What a jerk that pee-er is.

Our Portland water is the most delicious and pure I know of. And abundant!!

Well, there you are.

It is good to release it to where it could be used by the ecosystem downstream, and eventually the ocean.

Talk about over-reaction! This is just nuts.

from an abundance of supply. You call this overreaction and 'nuts'. Meanwhile CA has what they claim is a drought but they are still watering the golf courses. Palm Springs alone has 57 golf courses which take up to one million gallons a day to maintain. Are you doing the math?
So it is charming in a head in the sand sort of way to hear about how nuts Portland is, with plenty of water and a high standard of living, while CA wastes vast amounts of a scare supply to make sure well off folks can keep playing a game.
In short, Palm Springs alone uses more water than Portland is recycling every day of the year on golf courses alone.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91363837

California as a whole has 1,140 golf courses.
Nuts.

There are golf courses in the deserts of Arizona. The crazy is pandemic. Koyaanisqatsi.

... has been used at many colleges and businesses ever since the last big drought. They put up little signs telling you so, including the injunction to "no bebida" in English and Spanish.

If all the golf courses are not already doing so, they soon will be as the drought emergency deepens and laws kick in.

Half a gallon of pee in a 38 million gallon tank = 1 particle in 38 million! Even if it was cyanide, probably it would do nothing (I'm no chemist, but...).

Bladders ain't that big

firetrucks? farms? street sweepers?

If you read the article, you'll see the reservoir was more than full. Releasing the water is good for the environment.

Here in CA we've damned up the rivers to create reservoirs, starving downstream ecosystems of water. But unlike Oregon, we don't have the option of releasing it from overflowing reservoirs. All of our reservoirs are historically low.

So the real reason they're draining the water is "because they can". Makes more sense now.

Thanx for pointing that out to an Ohio boy who grew up using the so called "ecosystem" as a giant urinal.

This is a teenager with zero common sense.

How much fish, turtle, bird, squirrel, etc. pee and poop is in there? How many dead animals? How much runoff from the surrounding area including gasoline, dioxins, neurotoxins from pesticides, fertilizer, etc.? Oh, and the river feeding it? How much poop, pee, dead bodies, and contaminants are in there? Think nobody ever peed in the water on its way into the silly reservoir? It's a bloody joke.

Your post has zero common sense.

from butts! It's filtered/cleaned. Fish are probably in the reservoir, birds pooping on the water, on and on. Plus, the water is processed. Additionally, urine is sterile. And this kid's pee is so infinitesimal to 38 million gallons of water. How totally insane bizarre logic.

Idiots, animals and birds piddle in those all the time.

a water utility treatment plant?

Yes, Portland has open reservoirs of finished water.

That's infinitely more nasty than some sterile urine.

Hopefully the city doesn't drink the water directly from the reservoir without purification.

I live on the shore of Mosquito Creek Reservoir. That man made lake supplies the drinking water for 60,000 people. We've have about 65 drownings since WWII, some of them drifting about for several days to a week, and I never heard of anyone wanting to drain the lake because it's gross.

I've peed in it too. hahaha

This is a storage reservoir, not a raw water reservoir. This 38 million gallons is finished, chlorinated water. Not filtered.

Darn tasty too.

Sorry for the pun, but I had no idea that western municipalities did such a thing. Around here, and in most of the country I imagine, we use sealed water towers for that purpose. Without a mountain location for storage, that gives the city ample water pressure. It's also a handy place to display the name of the town to wayfarers.

I've never heard of an open storage reservoir, and I think I've spotted an inherent flaw in the design. Urine may be the least harmful substance that can be deposited in such an accessible facility.

birds and fish piss and shit a ton each day.

People pee in available water all the time. Out of sight, out of mind? The stupid hurts.

One mans urine is hardly the worst thing in that water.

The administrator guy sounds like he's got too much water and time.

Around Oklahoma, a lot of reservoirs are multipurpose, and function as municipal water supply, hydropower resource, and flood control... and, of course, recreation. But I'm sure no boats ever leak oil, no trash ever gets tossed into the water, and no beer-guzzling Okie ever, EVER, pees in the water while swimming. Ever.

=====================

This isn't the impoundment reservoir near the source of the water. It's a concrete pond - with no top - of ready to drink water. It leaves the topless tank and heads out into the pipes to our faucets.

They could sure use it.

===============

A lot of it would have been here anyway if it weren't for that pesky high pressure ridge that sat off the coast most of the winter, pushing the precipitation north. So it's contaminated with, what, a cup of urine among several million gallons? Hardly anything compared to what washes in from the surrounding land and air.

California has been know to dump water in very wet years when the reservoirs are at capacity, but it's done to prevent flooding due to overflows.

there's been a plan in the works for some time to fill the reservoir with concrete and use a different source of drinking water. Ah yes, here it is, right at the end of the article:
"The federal government has ordered Portland and other cities with open-air reservoirs to cover them. City leaders are waiting on results of a May ballot measure that could shift control of the Water Bureau from the City Council to a new independently elected board to decide how to proceed."
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/04/portland_will_flush_38_million.html

pee in the reservoir, like gasoline on a flame.

Easier to tell people it's to get rid of the pee than to explain the fish need it!

of people north of us urinating, shitting, dumping dead bodies and who knows what in it. That was just ridiculous.
I worked with a guy that received his water from a lake I fished in, I always told him I pissed in your drinking water yesterday when I went fishing. He just laughed and said everyone else does.

Are there fish? Birds? Animals? local runoff?

This is pointless beyond reason.
A gross over reaction to a miniscule contamination.

The birds poop freely in it, though.

No local runoff. No dogs frolicking away. But birds, yes.

No filtration at all in Portland.

But there is no way that there is no runoff.
And no filtration? Madness.

n/t

in southern CA. The water we get has been thru over 20 agricultural fields and is loaded with fertilizer! Water from the Colorado river has town upstream dumping effluent into that water. We get it all. Water from Oregon would be wonderful!!

Birds...dogs...cats...rats...bats...POLLUTION...

And how clean are all those water lines?!?

This needs to be stopped.

they have no sense of science?? the world is going to hell in a handbasket!!

And it is the best, tastiest water anywhere It has chlorine in it, but that's about it.

Any surface water has to have some filtering before pumping it into service lines. Otherwise you would have particulates clogging up the pumps and coming out of people's faucets. All public water supplies have to meet EPA guidelines. Filtering out particulates is kind of basic in that regard.

I've said it already on this thread, but this is just an open tank of treated water. We don't filter our surface water in Portland - not before or after this reservoir.

We have an amazingly clean source of water.

We get our water from deep aquifers in the Catskills - it's literally just filtered, there's no chlorine or ozone in it at all. It's so pure out of the tap that we ditched the filter in out Brita pitcher to fit more water.

And I definitely tainted it last summer when I was back country hiking up in the mountains. Beautiful part of the country that's sadly missed in the shadow of the City.

1 part in 300,000,000 (1 pint in 38 million gallons) is more than a 4C dilution!

Seriously, this is stupid birds will be dropping more shit than that into that reservoir every day

AAA O RIVER!

Last edited Thu Apr 17, 2014, 05:53 PM - Edit history (1)

then it's 'effin close to water' already)

Just sayin'

-F2C

> “Even though there is very minimal public health risk, the bottom line is that our
> commitment is to serve water that’s clean, cold and constant,” said Water Bureau
> administrator David Shaff. “That doesn’t include pee. Not from people, at least.”

Even the donkey making the decision admitted that the water that everyone there drinks
has *other* pee in it but they still flushed 38 million gallons of clean, potable water ...
just so that it can be piped to houses where people piss in it ...



Complete & utter wasteful toss-pots.

(And for the inevitable defender of the idiocy who repeats that there is plenty of "raw"
water up there so there's no problem, how about thinking of the purification costs that
have just been flushed for no good reason whatsoever? Waste for waste's sake is indefensible.)

basic maintenance - flushing sediment which collects in lines, for example. I suspect what they are doing is moving up some of the maintenance flushing to some extent.

episode for Portlandia.

Having come from California, I had never had such delicious water in my whole life ... straight from the tap without filtering ....

Oregon is a fucking water paradise ... so many clean, cool streams and rivers and lakes and ponds ...

I understand the water envy of the Californians, and the others here who profess their utter disgust with this option they have chosen. As a Portland resident who enjoys this wonderful water, I have no problem with them dumping the Mt. Tabor reservoir .... the watershed will benefit, and the marginal liberals on DU will scoff and sputter their histrionics .... and THAT brings me great joy in itself ...

Cry away ....

never drink the water while in Portland, ever

Our bit of protest against the dam

Maybe I should forward this article to SF and encourage them to drain it too. One can never be too careful!

is to pee into the stream that flows down to the Coors brewery.

How this ritual has never become a South Park episode escapes me.

isn't diluted in 38 Million Gallons? Doesn't make any sense.

Plus they know his name.

Really? One dude pisses in it and they have to waste 38 million gallons? That freshwater isn't expendable, idiots.