Posted on 04/18/2014 8:07:26 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
Portland administrators will flush 38 million gallons of water from Mt. Tabor Reservoir 5 after a 19-year-old man urinated in the city’s drinking supply.
“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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
This is about the equivalent of the oil spill in the gulf.
That is what I think. There was probably a story about the guy urinating and some moms went crazy, so they are lying about doing this, rather than explain that there are many things that get into the water.
Or, the other option is the guy actually put something really bad in the water as an attempt to poison it and they are lying.
All potable water distributions systems fed from surface waters must be filtered. They additionally chlorinate and/or fluoridate their systems to disinfect the water distribution system and intermediate water sources.
These treatments remove the bulk of contaminants, but don’t remove viruses from the water.
I suspect the bigger issue has to do with certifying the other portions of the system downstream are adequately disinfected. The cost of testing to current standards for one component might cost $50-$500 and the entire system might run into the tens of thousands.
It is probably easier and less costly to purge the system and disinfect entrance water sources to the standards the reservoir were built upon, than to recertify the design.
Technically the urine itself isn’t toxic, but the ammonia, salts, and possible viral contaminations could cause problems when not adequately diluted.
Additionally, system purging isn’t uncommon every 3 years or so for quality control. In some locations, it’s mandated. Drinking water reservoirs are typically cycled every 1-7 days for storage tanks, but larger bodies of water maybe classified differently.
Might have just offered a justification for the operators to expedite the associated paperwork in purging the system.
W.C. Fields was once asked why he never drank water.
“An abominable substance, my boy, fish f*** in it.”
According to the Portland water system web page, most of Portland’s water comes from the Bull Run watershed and IS NOT FILTERED but merely treated with chlorine and ammonia. So this means any pee or poop or anything else from any person or animal injected upstream of the runoff actually entering the final reservoirs will already be in the water!
But now everyone is worried about one guy peeing in the reservoir. I guess this is just a case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
(BTW, I would never drink unfiltered municipal tap water if at all possible anyway: I have a 5-stage under-counter RO system that produces all of the water I drink or cook with.)
In the lower portions of the southeast part of the country, much of the municipal tap water is little more than recycled sewage, as each downstream city taking its water from a nearby river is simply picking up the treated effluvium of its upstream neighboring city.)
I have birds that mess my car nearly everyday. I suspect the million birds that visit the reservoir along with the fish make a mess.
How many seagulls drop their bombs in that reservoir?
The unfiltered water system from surface water explains their action. In order to comply with existing regulations, in order to operate without filtration, they have to document and manage access to the water supply. In their case, that primary water supply is from a watershed over about 143sqmi which is off limits to public access or logging.
They also have to document and test measures taken insuring water quality on virus and ecoli.
The safety in their system is using a steadily flowing watershed.
One person urinating in 38 million gallons (about 143 mil Liters) doesn’t pose a threat, as the dermal LOAEL for urea is about 7mg/kg bw/day. Avg human bladder holds about 400-800ml, let’s say the perpetrator really tried to hold it, but then urinated as much as he could, say 800ml. According to NASA, urine is about 95% water and about 9.3 g/L, so he might have left 4-7.44 g of urea in the reservoir. A 150lb person weighs about 68kg. Or let’s say a small child, about 7kg,...lower observable affect exposure limit (LOAEL) would require about 50mg/day of dermal exposure or about 255gal of dermal absorption. Full ingestion requires about 6 times that volume for derived no effect limit and 12x that for LOAEL.
It’s probably more about regulatory compliance without filtration.
Let’s not talk about the family of deer frolicking in the stream above the reservoir and the other friends of the forest urinating in the water all year long. If turbidity gets high, the water system can switch to well water as their backup.
Avg water system planning for municipalities assumes about 200gal/capita/day and th website indicates they support about 800,000 customers. Population of Portland is about 600,000 or for a 38mil gal reservoir, that’s about 63 gal/capita daily. Most reservoirs are designed to support 1-7 days of supply or a 72 hr rule. Reads as though they either have 3 or 4 other reservoirs or they flow the water through the reservoir once a day and meet peak demand with well water.
Only real effect is he probably killed some algae, cleaning up their reservoir a little bit, and they probably purge their system with 3 times the volume capacity for full disinfection.
They probably wanted to justify a fine for the cost assessed for the action. About $50k of distributed water cost @$1/HCF to purge the reservoir, which improves their test documentation.
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