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
I hope they do not have any bears. He might mistake the reservoir for the woods.
That was my thought when I first read the story! Now, imagine 350 PPM of piss or
Dioxin or even Cyanide.
Decades ago, I read a story in a Playboy magazine, in which the author claimed that
a teaspoon of Dioxin in Lake Superior would kill millions of people. The kid in the
story contributed a piss in a 38 million gallon bucket!
So they are going to waste 38 Billion gallons of water to indulge the phobias of a single bureaucrat?
Portlandia comes to mind. Here is essential viewing to understand Portland, city of my birth. I have the distinction of being Portland’s first and oldest baby boomer. I couldn’t be more mortified.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ifc/videos?live_view=500&flow=list&view=0&sort=dd
CAGW is the 21st century intelligence test.
Our bureaus are shown to be heavily infested with fools and bandits. (As defined by the 5laws of human stupidity).
Such a decision over water purity is on par with damning 400 parts per million.
Or obsessing over a perceived global warming, less than the error bar of our temperature recording system.
Chicken Little is king.
Samurai, that scene still causes me to piss myself laughing! A while back I was
working for a field service company as a Millwright. The company won a contract
to do repairs at a water treatment plant in Terminal Island California. We called it
the Turd Farm.
One of my coworkers coined the term “Snickers Bars” to describe the brown floaters.
This is what I was reminded of when I saw your post, and what I will always think of
for the rest of my life every time I pass a candy rack in a store and see a Snickers
Bar.
I challenge anyone reading this to think of anything else!
This is why I never drink “spring water”, you never know who or what has pissed in it. And, as I learned as a youngster, never eat yellow snow for the same reason.
Can’t they ship it south to Cali? They could use it in food production
Also, cornstarch is best for preventing diaper rash
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Sounds like they’d be wise to invest in some underground clear wells.
many people who get stuck in the desert have to drink their own whizz. But I like this beauracrat so much, that if we got stuck, he could have mine
Fish pee in the ocean.
Bears crap in the woods.
Polar bears crap on the sea ice.
Let’s [not] even bring seagulls into this.
Its too much.
There is a big system and a lot of money in taking care of human excrements. Earlier it was dumped on the fields as plant food. No it’s treated more like unnatural dangerous special substance? In India they usually use the fields as a big toilet, it’s supposed to end there any how.
I noticed the movie “Idiocracy” has been on TV in my area recently. I’ve never seen it. Was it set in Portland?
“tenuous grasp of science”
tenous??? I think you are being waaaaayyyy to generous,Anthony.
Aren’t these the same loons who voted for stopping fluoridation?
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/2013/05/22/why-portland-is-wrong-about-water-fluoridation/
Wonder if that is the same administrator who declined to give me access to take pictures of the COOP station at Headwaters Portland because he was afraid I’d mess up the chlorination system. I should’ve saved the correspondence….
One day when my oldest son was 11, he was drinking a can of Pepsi. Looking for trouble, I asked him “Hey, getting your daily dose of birdshit extract?”
“Da-ad!”
“No, seriously, look at the label. What’s in there?”
Reading from the can, “Filtered carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, natural flavor, phosphoric acid…”
“There you go!” I interrupted him. “Where do they get phosphoric acid from?”
Bright kid, watches science programs- “Uh, phosphate rocks?”
“Yes! And where do they get phosphate rocks from?”
(Frowning) “From islands in the pacific… oh, Dad, that’s disgusting!”
Troll Dad grosses out his kids by the Socratic Method.
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OT but maybe the increasing polar bear population and the resultant…um…”albedo” and not CO2 is responsible for the melting arctic? 😎
How much urine did Adm Stockdale drink when he was a guest of the North Vietnam to prevent himself from being paraded as propaganda?
Whats amusing about this is Peter Gleick said the same thing – that Portland’s action is absurd.
Its impressive to see stupidity so bonkers that it unites climate alarmists and skeptics in condemning it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/throwing-away-good-water_b_5171359.html
They should just release a picture of it empty long ago. Then all of Portlandia will be delusional-ly happy.
A 100 boys peeing in 38 million gallons would pose no threat. And what about the birds, bugs, frogs, etc. fly, hop, swim into and over it with even less regard for Portlandia’s sensitivities?
That is nearly $400,000 worth of water. Wasting it, as the city is doing, should be criminal.
On top of that, the reservoir is in direct contact with “carbon pollution.”
If these kids lived in Gloucestershire, they would have been executed for the greater good. David Shaff should be fired, our water is deliberately contaminated daily from every wastewater treatment plant with an NPDES permit.
Are you sure this isn’t an episode from “Portlandia”? 🙂
“Gasp! And, fish pee in the water of that reservoir.” Yes, that and other things that are possibly even less appealing, at least according to W.C. Fields.