Wednesday they are flushing away millions of gallons of treated water for the second time in less than three years because someone urinated into a city reservoir.
In June 2011, the city drained a 7.5 million-gallon reservoir at Mount Tabor in southeast Portland. This time, 38 million gallons from a different reservoir at the same location will be discarded after a 19-year-old was videotaped in the act."The basic commandment of the Water Bureau is to provide clean, cold and constant water to its customers," bureau administrator David Shaff said Wednesday. "And the premise behind that is we don't have pee in it."The open reservoirs hold water that has already been treated and goes directly into mains for distribution to customers.The urine poses little risk — animals routinely deposit waste without creating a public health crisis — but Shaff said he doesn't want to serve water that was deliberately tainted.
Floy Jones, co-founder of the group Friends of the Reservoirs, criticized the decision to drain the reservoir, saying there's no evidence any urine reached the water and it wouldn't harm anyone if it did."It's extremely wasteful," she said.The man who urinated into Portland's water supply in June 2011 eventually pleaded guilty to misuse of a reservoir and was sentenced to community service.
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