Posted on 06/17/2011 9:00:48 AM PDT by JoeProBono
PORTLAND, Ore.- The head of the Portland Water Bureau said he decided to drain 7.8 million gallons of drinking water from an Oregon reservoir after a man urinated in it.
David Shaff, administrator of the bureau, said he decided to have the water drained after security cameras recorded a 21-year-old man, Joshua Seater of Molalla, urinating Wednesday into the Mount Tabor reservoir, which supplies drinking water to much of Portland, Portland cable news network NWCN reported Thursday.
"I had a pleasant buzz and I should have known better," NWCN quoted Seater as saying. "It was a split second thing and as soon as I was done I was like, 'Oh man' and I saw the police officer show up I knew exactly what they're here for."
Dave Stone, an assistant professor of toxicology at Oregon State University, said urine is generally sterile and would not pose any risks to those who drank the contaminated water, The Oregonian reported.
"It's inappropriate behavior. But how many animals are doing that or birds?" he said. "I don't want to second-guess the city, but I can't think of anything chemically that would have me be concerned."
However, officials said they are also concerned about unidentified objects Seater and four other people were taped dropping into the open reservoir.
Officials said the cleaning process is likely to take several days, but service to residents should not be affected.
NWCN reported the water is treated prior to entering the city's reservoirs.
"The water is chlorinated, but its chlorinated before the reservoirs so the water in the reservoirs is the water that you drink," city Commissioner Randy Leonard said.
Seater could face misdemeanor charges and fines, police said.
"I wouldn't mind paying for it, but I don't have a job right now," he told NWCN. "I'm willing to do community service to clean up the place because I feel bad and feel pretty stupid."
I sure wouldn’t drink water from an “open” reservoir without boiling it or filtering it through a good filter. That seems so dangerous to me. I don’t drink the water from our town’s closed hilltop tank. We put in a very expensive filter system for drinking water and ice making.
-paridel
It wasn’t urine which spread polio, but fecal contamination. Any responsible municipality with a surface water supply, like a reservoir, is going to give the water filtration (which will remove many pathogens), possibly coagulation with chemicals to help remove particles, followed finally by disinfection, usually with chlorine. One man urinating in the reservoir is completely trivial.
I thought it too was insane UNTIL the last line about him and 4 OTHER people DROPPING ITEMS in the RESERVOIR!!!
It’s not like Portland has a water shortage problem. All they have to do is wait a day and the rain will fill it back up.
no ted kennedy pictures please
The homosexual men in Portland are going, “What’s in this water? I’ve tasted this before. Maurice?”
The guy took a piss in 8 million gallons of water and these idiots think that polluted the water and made it undrinkable?
Please, please tell me this is a fake story!
LOL. That’s a good one. I loved the line: “Portland is where young people go to retire.”
The problem with crapping in a pool is that someone could actually ingest raw solid fecal matter (yech).
It's amazing that millions of people drink from domestic wells in close proximity to their own or their neighbors' septic systems. Quite literally, they are drinking their own wastewater, yet with modern design and construction, there is little risk.
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