Man Urinates In Water, City(Portland, Ore) Flushes 8M Gallons

(06-20) 15:05 PDT Portland, Ore. (AP) --

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.

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.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/06/20/national/a140456D20.DTL

More pee is found in most swimming pools, betcha.

but how many people go around drinking the water out of swimming pools?

They would've been criticized had they not dumped the water.

Portland drinks unaltered surface water.

The young men were also videotaped throwing unknown things in the reservoir, so that was likely a factor as well.

Dead ducks are probably pretty common.

So water filtration systems are probably REALLY popular there, I would imagine.

No, we have a great water source, federally protected by congress in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

Though I'm sure that some folks have a home filtration system. Not that it would do any good, other than taking out large chunks at the faucet!

Most big cities have covered reservoirs. Portland has to cover the reservoirs by sometime later this decade. Dead ducks, skinny dippers, bags of dog poo....all that stuff ends up in the reservoirs. Eventually they fish stuff out, before it goes down the pipes to our faucets.

Thanks for the nice vision of what I'm drinking!

:puke:

I think the water bureau is doing something of a 'hard sell' on the voters right now.