From ARStechnica and the stupid, it burns, department comes this ridiculous story of a bureaucrat gone off the rails. See the video that set off this pissing match below.
The city of Portland, OR will empty a 38-million gallon reservoir after a teenager allegedly urinated in it, according to the Associated Press. It’s the second time in three years that Portland is flushing its Mount Tabor reservoir after a urine-related incident.
The reservoir is open-air and sits exposed to all of nature, leading many parties to question how necessary a draining would be, or how polluted 38 million gallons of water can really be by a single man’s urine.
David Shaff, Portland’s water bureau administrator, reserves a special disgust specifically for human urine. In 2011, when Shaff drained the reservoir following a urination, he reasoned to the Portland Mercury, “Do you want to be drinking someone’s pee?… There’s probably no regulation that says I have to be doing it but, again, who wants to be drinking pee?” This time around, Shaff wrote in a statement, “Our customers have an expectation that their water is not deliberately contaminated.”
A half-liter of urine dumped in a 143 million-liter reservoir would get a urea concentration of about 3 parts per billion, according to Slate. (We calculated it would be a 50 nanoMolar solution.) Meanwhile, the EPA allows concentrations of arsenic in drinking water up to 10 ppb (never mind eating asparagus).
This all came about over this video showing a man taking a leak in the reservoir:
Gasp! And, fish pee in the water of that reservoir.
Source: http://www.ask.com/question/do-fish-urinate
Maybe David Shaff, Portland’s water bureau administrator, doesn’t realize they have a water treatment facility for drinking water? From the Wikipedia entry
To treat the raw water, the bureau uses a process called chloramination, which disinfects the water with chlorine then adds ammonia to prolong the chlorine’s effectiveness.[28] Although these additives kill microorganisms such as coloform bacteria and giardia that can cause disease in humans, they can react with naturally occurring compounds in water to form other compounds such as trihalomethanes. Under provisions of the SDWA, the bureau monitors the levels of disinfectant byproducts to ensure that they remain under the maximum limits set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and enforced by the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS).[29]
Since 1997, in response to targets set by the ODHS, the bureau has been adding sodium hydroxide to the water to reduce its potential for corroding lead and copper in home plumbing. The treatment, which makes the water less acidic, has resulted in “at least a 50 percent reduction in lead at the tap… ”. The target pH range is 7.8 to 8.0.[28]
#idiot
All mass supplied water contains pee- anyone who has a yuck factor for recycled water can’t drink any public water or even spring water. Always “contaminated” in an insignificant manner.
Article Title mis-spells Portland as Portand.
[Thank you. Fixed. Mod]
Just a sign of the rampant lunacy that is endemic in Portland. I sometimes think there must be something in the water.
I am not really certain what this reservoir really is. From some of the comments the chief water-loon made, it sounds as if it may actually be treated water (already chlorinated etc), which in other parts of the county would be held in large closed tanks on the top of a hill or a tall tower.
They have plans to add a cover sometime in the future.
Even if it is pre-treated, and we ignore the birds crapping in it, garbage blowing into it, and the local mafia dumping bodies in it, there is still no valid reason for dumping the water given the dilution.
#idiot
ROTFL
I suspect that the water folks were forced to listen to their attorneys. One of whom undoubtedly pointed out the bevy of nuisance lawsuits forthcoming from litigious lunatics who would claim various ailments traceable to human urine contamination.
A no win situation, really.
On the other hand, it is Portland, a dear place that exists only tangentially with our Universe and whose population spends most of their time in an alternate space/time continuum.
Urine is semi-sterile. Might want to do some tests to see if the miscreant has an infection, disease, etc.
And what about bird droppings and other stuff that end up in the same water …?
A large part of our drinking water comes from a nearby large lake. All used water from the region is recycled and flows back into the same lake. The lake hosts a considerable number of large passenger ships with diesel engines and literally thousands of motorboats. Yuck …
Heck, he doesn’t even have a concept of arithmetic. About 0.3 ppb non-water urine solids in the reservoir assuming it is well-mixed. A bit less if you consider flow through the reservoir diluting it and no plug flow. The cute part is that they dump the reservoir to a waste water plant. Waste water plants do not do well with slugs of clean, no BOD water, and if this reservoir was chlorinated…
This reservoir was a holding tank for the drinking water system. You don’t need a lot of “science” for this one, the stupidity comes under the “intuitively obvious to the most casual observer” category.
This cluelessness reminds me of one of my hippy friends who had paraffin grease to prevent nappy rash for her baby but never used it because she did not like the idea of ‘chemicals’ being in contact with her baby’s skin all day/
She used make-up, deodorant, perfume, moisturizer and dabbled in the odd recreational drug of course, but drew the line paraffin grease!!
I guess Portland has water to spare…
I’d like to apply for this guy’s position. My qualifications are I’M NOT AN IDIOT.
Come back, W. C. Fields.
I had an interesting experience a few years ago. I was fishing on the shores of large lake in Canada. I got up and walked about 3 meters onshore and took a whiz. A park warden drove around the corner and “caught” me. He was quite disturbed that I wasn’t the required 8 meters from shore. As he berated me a moose walked out into the lake down shore and proceeded to offload a month’s worth of human pee. The warden said “humph” and walked away. And then there are beavers, muskrats, otters, mink etc.
My back of the imaginary envelope calculation of number of creatures that ever lived divided by the number of water molecules on earth… lessee, carry the 4… gozinta pi x number of alligators in Alaska… taking the integral of coals in Newcastle… well I reckon every drop of water on earth has been through some organism’s bladder.
Now what is Portland going to do?
This is emblematic of a greater problem. The cause—the calculator.
People try to make some qualifications which are so pathetic because they simply cannot quantify.
Symbols on a calculator are simply just that –symbols. They do not register as quantities,
So much climate stupidity arises from the fact there are often monumental exaggerations based upon minimal quantities.
A cursory understanding of climate science is that yes, there is a greenhouse effect and yes quantum mechanics suggests some feedback to the earth, but in the end the quantity of the effective feedback is minimal and there are so many unknown variables that the concept of a settled science is amazingly stupid.
The reason a decidedly ignorant person is in the position of relative importance is that the inability of the general public is growing.—- and the public cannot fathom the obvious.
“David Shaff, Portland’s water bureau administrator,” probably believes Homeopathy results in legit medications.
The solution is to drink whisky instead.
From the linked news story:
“The open reservoirs hold water that’s already been treated and goes directly into mains for distribution to customers.”
With that being said, it’s likely still stupid to dump the water. I work at a drinking water plant in Texas (reminder – the rules may be different in Oregon) and all drinking water is required to be sent to the customers with some disinfecting ability left in the water. Even a tiny amount of disinfectant in that much water would easily render the urine harmless. As others have stated, it obviously doesn’t have any trouble keeping the water drinkable even with all the animals that are sure to be doing the same in any open body of water.
“We calculated it would be a 50 nanoMolar solution”
This is beginning to sound like homoeopathy denial!!
😉
Electrify the fence. : )
Wow if that happened in Australia you would have people peeing in the reservoir every week and sending in videos just to verify the stupidity of the administrator.
best shoot all the sea gulls aka “shzt hawks” that fly over the reservoir. and all the other birds and animals that pee and poo in the watershed…
Giardiasis
Giardiasis (popularly known as beaver fever[1]) is a parasitic disease caused by the flagellate protozoan Giardia lamblia (also sometimes called Giardia intestinalis and Giardia duodenalis).[2] The giardia organism inhabits the digestive tract of a wide variety of domestic and wild animal species, as well as humans. It is a common cause of gastroenteritis in humans, infecting approximately 200 million people worldwide.
Giardiasis is passed via the fecal-oral route. Primary routes are personal contact and contaminated water and food. The more susceptible are institutional or day-care workers, travelers, those eating improperly treated food or drink, and people who have contact with individuals already infected.
It is a particular danger to people hiking or backpacking in wilderness areas worldwide, especially if they have no immediate access to medical supplies. Giardia is also suspected to be zoonotic—communicable between humans and other animals. Major reservoir hosts include beavers hence its nickname, beaver fever, dogs, cats, horses, humans, cattle and birds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardiasis
This news story of political stupidity run amok reminds of that hilarious scene from the classic comedy Caddyshack:
“It’s no big deal”… LOL!
Sir, have you no sense of scale?