- Water Bureau
- City water supply: Not a toilet, even for drunks.
When an apparently drunk man peed in a Mount Tabor reservoir around 1:30am last night, he set off an unprecedented chain reaction.
A security officer who had been watching the man and his four friends drinking from the reservoir guard tower alerted police, then called on the water bureau to take the reservoir offline. Using a new $23 million remote control system, just installed in April, the bureau immediately shut off the pipes leading from the reservoir. The guard and a police officer confronted the men and got their information, including the alleged 21-year-old pee-er.
Then, the water bureau made the call to dump the entire 7.2 million gallons of water in the reservoir, at a cost of over $35,000.* That’s one expensive trip to the bathroom.
On top of that, the city is working with the district attorney to consider pressing charges against the pee-er, perhaps to help recoup some of the cost. Water Bureau administrator David Shaff isn’t sure what the charge would be exactly, “Well, I just dumped 8 million gallons, there’s maybe a ‘theft’ in there somewhere… He has some idea that he’s made a mistake, but he has no idea how big.”
I asked Shaff whether they follow the same protocol—shutting off the water and dumping the whole reservoir—when an animal urinates or dies in the water (last year, bird poop caused an E. coli scare in westside water).
“If we did that, we’d be shutting it off all the time. We fish out animals or things that have blown in all the time,” said Shaff. So why shut it off the water for human pee? Especially if it sends $35,000 down the drain?
“Do you want to be drinking someone’s pee?” replied Shaff. Um, no. “Okay, there you go, there’s your answer. We are being incredibly conservative and cautious. It simply makes sense. There’s probably no regulation that says I have to be doing it but, again, who wants to be drinking pee? ”
In his six years at the water bureau, Shaff says he has never heard of someone being caught peeing into a reservoir. But in 2008, the bureau pressed charges against two people caught skinny dipping in Mt. Tabor’s water. The nudity-infected water was not dumped and the culprits were sentenced to just 16 hours of community service.
*Anyone listening in to city council this morning will note that Shaff told the commissioners the total clean up cost would be $600,000. He later called to correct that figure.
Urine is sterile. This is as wasteful as it gets.
Pee is sterile in healthy people. Don’t dump the water but sentence that dude for 500 hours to something vile, like working at the sewer plant scooping out the front side filters! Fouling some of the best drinking water on the planet is just maximally rude even if you are stupid.
I’m okay with dumping the water, but they should charge the guy the full $35,000. F
@R – The key word there is “healthy” people, right? Do you KNOW this guy, or where his bladder has been?
Fucking ridiculous to drain the water, but feel free to prosecute the shit out of this guy, then post signs for future drunks/hippies.
The body excretes drugs in urine as well. Significant levels of contraceptives, antidepressants and other drugs have been found in water supplies that come from upstream sewage. From a PR standpoint the city had to dump it – would you want to think you were drinking it? It’s totally Lars/VicTaft material if they didn’t dump it. But they need to be on top of idiots jumping the fence faster. And yes, Reymont, the full $35K. He was lucky he wasn’t nabbed by homie security, in fact that’s what the city should do – mess with the water and that’s who we give you to.
I think there are worse things in the reservoir than one drunk dude’s pee. If you’ve ever swam in a pool, then you’ve likely ingested other people’s urine and feces. You might not want to think about it, but this is entirely an issue of people being ridiculous.
Doesn’t all this water come from the Bull Run Watershed?
Any animals up there?
Do they pee?
Quickly Googlin’ says the average human bladder holds ~ 500 cubic centimeters of fluid. Even if you very conservatively doubled that, we’re still talking about an amount that would be laughably diluted by the other 8.6 million gallons (about 31 ppb, if my math is right).
I get the “ick” factor, but this is something that probably should have just been swept under the table without the public’s knowledge.
Does anyone know how long it will take to refill the reservoir? Given the flood levels in the rivers right now, it’s probably the best possible time to have to dump the reservoir. If we were in the middle of a drought it might be ridiculous but I bet it gets refilled in a few days.
And I don’t care if urine is sterile or not, I don’t want it in my drinking water.
Sure, but there are hardly ever people there to see the act, so obviously it doesn’t count.
@Andy Mesa – that’s a good argument for tighter controls, NOT for MORE pee in the water! Sheesh.
I agree with the city, dump the water, prosecute and fine the guy. This is our drinking water. And yes I do think we should be dumping it if animals die or pee in the open reservoirs in town. Better yet get rid of the reservoirs
The system is safe dealing with animal waste and carcasses and no water or health concerns were raised by the bureau in response to your questions (just hyperbole – “do you want to drink pee?”…but maybe you were being propositioned…).
This response of draining and dumping seems over the top.
Right now the Water Bureau is in a political fight with local businesses and residents on how hard to push against federal requirements for water treatment facilities to manage cryptosporidium:
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…
So politics rather than health may be the context that created such an exaggerated decision. It would also explain the dramatic overstatement of cost made to Council on the cost of clean-up ($600 thousand stated to Council vs. $35 thousand actual).
Needless to say, Saltzman’s proposal for an independent utility rate board and independent oversight of the city utilities in general look better all the time.
Birds shit in those reservoirs! Not to be pissy about it, but this seems like the city government dicking around again. You’d think we’re pretty flush, the way they’re pissing away our money.
with what i have seen in that water pee probably cleaned it
Given the bird crap, the animal carcasses, peeing elk and hobos and the thousands of other potential contaminants, I demand that Randy Leonard himself boil my personal drinking water.
whoever made the call to dump all that water should be fired. That was a ridiculous decision.
Agreed. If they dumped the water every time a human peed in those reservoirs, they’d need to do so every day. Source: my many friends who grew up on Mt. Tabor.
Apparently, some uppity up made the call from a PR perspective because any water plant operator who knows where the bear shits in the buckwheat knows that the PPM of urine in the water from this incident is so monumentally insignificant as to not be a concern in the slightest.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…
Shaff said the Water Bureau regularly finds dead animals in the same drinking supply but doesn’t dump the water. “This is different,” he said.
“Do you want to drink pee?” he asked bluntly.
When questioned about scientific data and the small amount of urine in such a large reservoir, he interjected: “Answer the question. It has nothing to do with scientifically.
River etiquette goes that people are supposed to relieve themselves directly in the river as for one, human urine is sterile, and the vast quantities of fresh water dilutes and disapates the concentration to such an extent that the contents of the deed this drunk guy did is effectively neutralized within a minute. Although I wouldn’t advise drinking urine in direct concentrations, certainly I would drink one quart diluted to a concentrate of 1:32,000,000 parts fresh water anytime, anyday, anywhere. The $35,000 actions of this ignorant employee should be paid by him, not the person that peed. It is taught in EMT courses to pee in a persons eye, if you did not have saline solution, in order to flush battery acid or other caustic substances to save someones eyesight in an emergency. The difference between ignorance and education is that education has it’s limitations.
Uhh I guess everyone forgot that pee is mostly water. Besides, isn’t it treated before it reaches your house? The same amount of water has been on this planet since the dawn of time. So odds are the water you drink right now was pee at one time.
pee kid might have a facebook with a dog wearing a confederate flag, some MMA, and cool bro-bod shots- maybe just a kid with same name from same area, maybe pee kid- news calls him Joshua Seater
I call shenanigans. Here’s my theory: This guy was a shill for the Water Bureau, who desperately want to raise our water rates 80% and award a multimillion dollar contract for covering the resevoirs to their cronies. Despite the fact that PDX’s water is famously clean. But get people to worry about pee in their water? It’s a stroke of genius only a political operative could have dreamed up.
And $35K to drain the resevoir? Completely unnecessary. Time to fire Shaff.
Wow. Does anyone with oversight over David Shaff read this? Do they realize what a complete moron they have handling their water?
Really, how does one get to be a “Water Bureau administrator” without knowing the first thing about how the water supply works?
Hey, they didn’t dump it when that homeless man DIED in it a few years ago! What the hell! I guarantee HE peed in it, and worse, after he drowned(if not before). Where is the logic?
Hey, they didn’t drain the water when that homeless man DIED in the reservoir a few years back! You better believe he did worse than pee, too. Did any of us want to drink dead people water? Even after the news told us the water “didn’t taste bad”?
Just goes to show you now silly city folks are, what a bunch of fools……….small wonder the folks in “fly over” country are laughing at these morons.
What if birds take a dump in the wate (and I am sure they do?)
They could have charged people to go yellow water rafting down stream to recoup some of that $35.000