Portland is draining another public water reservoir because some asshole appeared on video pissing in it. This also happened in 2011. Here’s a picture of the reservoir that was drained then.
If the new reservoir is like the old one, it would appear that all kinds of flying things could (and do) shit in it. The solution to pollution is dilution, so while it might gross us out to think about it, the tiny bit of birdshit that falls in the reservoir is diluted to far beyond the level of even homeopathic relevance. Is the issue that the excrement is human instead of bird? I always figured I was getting a little bit of something I’d rather not think about in my tap water, and some drunk asshole’s piss is probably less disgusting that a few other items I can imagine.
Spankyslappybottom
Snowden should ask Putin about this.
Bobby Thomson
Urine is sterile, drinking water is treated, and all water has been urine at some point in the last few millions of years.
Belafon
Wait until they find out the FDA allows bug parts in their food.
BGinCHI
With all the craft beer in Portland why the fuck would you drink water anyway?
Amateurs.
SatanicPanic
It’s a slippery slope- first you allow someone to urinate in your water next thing you know they’re adding fluoride.
KG
that’s just dumb. i’ve never been in a pool that i didn’t (a) piss in and (b) drink from. it’s not that big a deal. but then i’m a swimmer/water polo player.
Ash Can
How is it that someone can get close enough to the edge of the reservoir to whiz in it anyway, especially if this isn’t the first time it’s happened? I should think that draining a reservoir is a big enough deal that Portland wouldn’t want to be doing it all the time. Something goofy is going on here.
ETA: Plus, the fact that, as others have noted, other shit (literally) is going to be falling into the open water anyway. I don’t get it.
ranchandsyrup
Water quality managers at beaches presume that each bather has a half miligram or so of feces on them. Too many people at a beach could mean levels are too high and they could close them.
Morbo
Hey Portland, that means your local beers all have pee in them. I’d be happy to take them off your hands for you.
catclub
I would have guessed that is Volunteer Park in Seattle, but I guess all NW reservoirs look alike.
kindness
Portland is lucky they don’t have California’s no rain. We Californian’s would not drain reservoirs because some loon pissed in it.
Bubblegum Tate
Portland is a goddamn embarrassment.
chopper
the really dumb thing is, when it was pointed out to the water manager that dead animals are found in the water and yet they don’t dump it, he said “this is different. do you want to drink pee?”
not any more than i want to drink a dead animal, shithead.
catclub
Homeopathic doses are much smaller, aren’t they? So small that you are unlikely to get a single molecule of the dosing substance in a drink of water.
jl
They should send it, single shot of human piss, bird doo and all, to CA. I think we would take it.
cthulhu
@Bobby Thomson:
Unless there is something wrong with you. Still, I would think the water would be far too valuable to dump for something as pointless as this.
Chyron HR
@Spankyslappybottom:
“In Russia, we pee sparkling mountain water. I hope we do.”
bobbo
Does Portland not treat its water somewhere between the reservoir and the tap? WTF?
Narcissus
Does anybody actually watch The Cycle?
? Martin
@bobbo: That was my thought. Growing up I had a reservoir across the street from my house. It was stocked with fish and we went fishing there all the time. There were always all kinds of dead things in there, weird shit growing in the water, etc. But treatment was downstream and post-treatment it was pumped directly to the water tower.
This might be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve heard government do in quite a while.
sparrow
I read an article with a quote from the official that made the call to drain it… it seems like more of a PR thing than anything… basically he said “I’m not going to serve people water that I KNOW has human pee in it”, when there is plenty of cleans water at hand. Apparently it has rained a lot lately and they’re not hurting for water.
But why the heck can’t they build a cover for that thing??
Bill in Section 147
If you could prove that a person capable of suing the water district didn’t get sick from that particular human’s pathogens you wouldn’t need to drain it.
I just wish that the pisser could be held accountable but it seems that if you can tell me it’s rain, we have to look forward.
catclub
@? Martin: “This might be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve heard government do in quite a while. ”
There’s Reagan’s SDI. And it is still ongoing. And much more expensive.
WaterGirl
A friend of mine likes to say he only swims in the non-peeing side of the pool. Which is a lot like the “no smoking tables” that are located right next to the smoking section.
jl
@WaterGirl:
” the non-peeing side of the pool. ”
Which side is that?
I’ll look for lanes with ‘pee’ and ‘no pee’ signs next time I swim, so I can switch if I am short taken.
? Martin
@Belafon: The best part of that is the documentation:
Your average jar is probably 454 grams (1 lb), so if you find more than 140 insect parts or 5 rodent hairs in there, go ahead and return it.
And so as to not ruin peanut butter for you, I also know that all of the major peanut butter brands and outlets like Hersheys that puts peanut butter in candies, etc. have MUCH higher standards than this, most being 0 parts and 0 hairs. It’s the smaller processors that have trouble reaching that kind of goal as it’s somewhat expensive in capital costs to get there.
But you might want to avoid the white label Chinese peanut butter from Walmart.
WaterGirl
@? Martin: I’m thinking it’s a PR move. The powers that be must know all this, but there are plenty of water drinkers that don’t, so they are trying to avoid the issue, or maybe avoid the conversations that would have to happen to if they actually educated people about what is in their water.
Edit: and I see sparrow got there first.
WaterGirl
@jl: Which part of the pool is the non-peeing part?
Yeah, that was his point, which is why he always said it with a friendly smirk on his face.
jl
@? Martin: But, how much piss is allowed in peanut butter, that is what I want to know.
? Martin
@jl:
Mysteriously, it’s always the side you happen to be swimming on. If you change sides, that, through a physical-chemical process that we haven’t fully unlocked, then becomes the no-pee side. You’d think it would fail to happen at least once in a while, but no, it turns out to be utterly infallible. Even in the edge case of a pool filled with nothing but pee, the side you are swimming in still becomes the no-pee side. It’s quite remarkable.
Anna in PDX
@SatanicPanic: Ha ha! So true. I actually work for the City of Portland (not the Water Bureau) and I believe this is a PR move and is of course entirely unnecessary.
Pee Cee
So they’re dumping 38 million gallons of water because it’s 0.0035 ppm urine?
Urine which is also … mostly water.
Tim C.
@Morbo: NO DEAL! You have to come here to enjoy our ridiculously hoppy IPAs. More bitter than a wingnuts tears and around 8% ABL. Nothing finer in the universe.
And as for why we don’t cover our resevours? We will be soon. http://koin.com/2013/06/02/city-will-cover-reservoirs/ The problem is that when the city has some century old infrastructure and the Water department has a long complicated history of being used for things other than water plus a weird reflexive hatred of doing anything to water ever.
Call it local flavor.
lol chikinburd
@bobbo: Portland apparently considers even fluoride a “contaminant” (as SatanicPanic alluded to above). There was a referendum there in, what,
2012? to actually start fluoridating the water, and it got voted down?ETA: May of last year, not 2012.
? Martin
@jl: It would appear that so long as the piss is not gritty, then any amount is acceptable.
Bob Munck
@catclub: A pint of pee to 38 million gallons of water? That’s 304,000,000 to 1. I believe that the homeopathic nuts would describe that at “4C” or “4.25C” (4.25 is 304,000,000 log 100; I don’t know if they actually do it that way).
If you want to know how many molecules of pee are in a glass of contaminated water, you can use Avogadro’s Number, 6.022×10²³ to figure it out. I haven’t the strength. I wore myself out calculating the number of dollars in Scrooge McDuck’s money bin.
The water in the finest champagne has been through the kidneys of the worst people.
Bob Munck
@catclub: A pint of pee to 38 million gallons of water? That’s 304,000,000 to 1. I believe that the homeopathic nuts would describe that at “4C” or “4.25C” (4.25 is 304,000,000 log 100; I don’t know if they actually do it that way).
If you want to know how many molecules of pee are in a glass of contaminated water, you can use Avogadro’s Number, 6.022×10²³ to figure it out. I haven’t the strength. I wore myself out calculating the number of dollars in Scrooge McDuck’s money bin.
The water in the finest champagne has been through the kidneys of the worst people.
the Conster
I always thought that tabbing a public water supply with LSD and then standing back and watching would be great fun. How has that not happened yet, since I thought of that decades ago? Maybe Portland is weird for a reason.
ranchandsyrup
One of our local pools when I was a kid had a sign up saying that they had put a urine detecting compound in the pool that would produce a dye and identify the person that peed in the pool. It was a lie, but was effective deterrence.
Belafon
@? Martin: I’m mostly a city boy, but I grew up in a rather poor family so we would get animals from relatives’ farms sometimes and have to clean them. So, I’m rather realistic about what it takes to make food. I’m also not really afraid of “impurities” because otherwise we wouldn’t have survived as a species. If I can see it or taste it, then I would like the food replaced, but otherwise, I’m not really going to freak out.
Dave C
@Tim C.:
Don’t listen to Tim’s silly propaganda. Everybody knows that San Diego is where the real West Coast IPA’s can be found! ;P
Belafon
@Tim C.: It seems the locals are against local flavor.
MD Rackham
@catclub:
I always liked the part–which didn’t get much publicity at the time–of being able to pee in Russian reservoirs from space.
And it probably would have worked more reliably than the current BMD system.
Mudge
This story may be apocryphal, but I remember that when astronauts were told that their pee would be recycled as water in space, they only accepted the idea if each individual had their own treatment system and only drank their own recycled pee. So (for Apollo) there were 3 treatment systems instead of the less expensive common one.
Cassidy
Does this story have confirmed sources? Looks like Mix is learning! How exciting.
So a large body of water isn’t for pissing in? Next you’re gonna tell me jerking off on a place isn’t allowed.
? Martin
@Belafon: I’m the same way, but Ms Martin is weird about food. She has a much more direct connection between her imagination and her appetite than I do.
Bobby Thomson
@Belafon:
I won’t eat dropped food after it’s been on the ground for five days.
? Martin
@Bobby Thomson: What about melons?
Tommy
LOL. That reservoir in my town is a lake. It is more of a large pond then a lake and I don’t even think it has a name. People fish in it. When I was in high school we sailed in it. All kinds of things. But pretty much just called it the reservoir.
Elizabelle
The water bureau administrator, David Shaff, disses the pee-er and a red state.
WaterGirl
@? Martin:
Yes! That’s exactly it.
Tim C.
@Dave C: SLANDER!!!!! LIEEESSSS!!! I challenge you to a duel…. we will each drink seventeen IPAs The person who….. wait. Maybe seventeen IPAs is how this all started?
Note… I might actually have a good reason to go to Sand Diego.
? Martin
Oh, a fun test for people is to ask them to spit in a cup and then drink it. A lot of people can’t do it – the part of your brain that protects you from eating certain things kicks in and tells you that it’s foreign, even though it just came out of your mouth.
We’re complicated.
Bobby Thomson
@? Martin: Dropped food, not grown food.
WaterGirl
@? Martin: I couldn’t do it. Certainly not for money, maybe for love. I’d have to think about that.
Tommy
@Bobby Thomson: I might not be there totally with you there, but I get it. The human race is pretty amazing.
ranchandsyrup
The Colorado River water that we use in San Diego has been through approximately 9 sets of kidneys (animal and human) before we use it.
cleek
note to the 300,000 people who get their drinking water from Jordan Lake, NC:
my septic tank is about a half a mile from the river that feeds the lake.
enjoy.
Chris T.
If you click through to the story, it says that this is “post-treatment” water that goes right into the tap without further (re)treatment.
(It’s still pretty safe to drink after someone pees in it. And it certainly could be worse.)
Pee Cee
Things that are not acceptable in drinking water, and require tossing 38 M gallons:
* 0.0035 ppm urine
Things that *are* acceptable in drinking water:
* 0.010 ppm arsenic
* 0.005 ppm cadmium
* 0.2 ppm cyanide
* 0.015 ppm lead
* 0.002 ppm mercury
* 0.005 ppm benzene
… and much more!
Hungry Joe
@Tim C.: When you make it to San Diego, head for the Blind Lady Ale House on Adams — that’ll get you started. Might get you finished, too. (It’s just within walking/staggering distance from my house.)
? Martin
Oh, and it looks like we have a resolution in Ukraine that might just work, and all without rolling in tanks or blowing Putin (I never understood why the GOP was advocating doing both).
rikyrah
8 MILLION HAVE SIGNED UP FOR OBAMACARE!!!
Cacti
Speaking of reservoirs in Portland…
Who could have guessed that super patriot, whistleblower Edward Snowden would end up being a tool of the Kremlin?
(raises hand)
Higgs Boson's Mate
This is an amazing waste. I spent a year on the southernmost branch of the Mekong river. I have no idea how many people and animals contributed their waste to that fine stream. I do know that you couldn’t see through our drinking water if there was much more than a gallon of it. No one got sick – from the water anyway.
Tommy
@Pee Cee: My little rural town is like one of the coolest places in the world. Each year they send me with my power bill (and water and trash pick up) the EPA results from our water tests. They are off the charts amazing. My tap water is the cleanest you could want. I am something of a foodie and health guy. My tap water out of the faucet is about as clean as anything that goes through a filter. I mention this to folks that live by me and they don’t seem to understand how cool it is.
Belafon
@Cacti: Trying a little too hard.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@rikyrah:
A late surge of signups pushed Californian’s enrollment numbers to 100000 enrollees more than the Obama administration had predicted. By Tuesday’s enrollment extension close to 1.4 million CA residents had signed up for private policies through the state’s exchange. Of those enrolled, 88% were eligible for subsidies to reduce their premiums.
Villago Delenda Est
@chopper: It’s pee! EWWWWW!
The stupid. It pees.
NCSteve
Jesus. I’d hate to see what happened if someone dropped a Baby Ruth into it.
Villago Delenda Est
@sparrow:
Um, because that costs money that’s needed for something else much more important. Like subsidies for privately owned sports teams.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: Lies. Faux noise tells me the numbers are skewed, as does Herman Cain.
jl
Oh dammit, I was going to mention this, but forgot.
I do not think that birds and bees piss, at least in the way humans do, with a separate pee and poop stream.
I have lost my faith in BJ as a reliable source of science and public affairs news!
LanceThruster
Question: What is the white stuff in bird poop?
Answer: That is bird poop, too.
Kurt Vonnegut – “Timequake”
WaterGirl
@Chris T.: What?? We’re supposed to read the story before commenting? I think not!
Seriously, though, that does make a big difference; thanks for catching that and sharing.
RSR
In a similar vein, the FDA recently tried to get breweries to stop giving (or selling) their spent grain to farmers as feed. The FDA was worried about documenting the quality/safety of the grain. Grain from which we just made a beverage for human consumption. SMDH
stickler
The reservoirs aren’t covered because, as mentioned, it costs money. But, this being Portland, there was also an asinine aesthetic reason — residents of the neighborhoods around them liked how they look uncovered. Pretty lakes! In pretty parks! (On at least one occasion, with the pretty body of a dead hobo floating in it!) The city had been stonewalling the Feds on covering the reservoirs right up until last year.
Portland water comes straight off Mount Hood, through the Bull Run watershed, and is some of the softest and purest water in the country. People were bummed when the Feds made the city add chloramine a few years back. In my opinion, having open reservoirs, where the geese get to shit in that fine Bull Run water, is the real stupidity.
Pee Cee
@WaterGirl:
In public perception (OMG! This is PEE!), not in whether the water’s actually safe to drink.
Tim C.
@stickler: But but… classic architecture….. history…. tradition….
And yes, it’s the folks high up on Mt. Tabor and the ones who live near Washington Park who have both money and clout that were providing the major resistance to coverage in the community. The expense was the big factor like you also said. As a totally off topic thing, the ‘hidden’ playground on the southeast corner of the park is always deserted, way better than the crowded one near the crater.
Did anyone mention that the reservoirs are built on a volcano? Extinct!
LongHairedWeirdo
So sayeth many a rightwing bullshitter, but that doesn’t make it true. The opposite is, in fact, true in many cases. Mercury gets quite nicely diluted when emitted by coal burning plants, but it then gets reconcentrated by the fish who eat it, making some of our most healthy pieces of seafood toxic to us.
Many a time, the solution to pollution is either *concentration* – so you can dump it safely in one place – or, this is really scary and messed up – not making it in the first place, which is often possible, and sometimes cheaper.
I will grant you that it’s stupid to dump millions of gallons of water because up to a liter of urine was put in it. But no need to chant the Rightwinger’s Kindergarten Songbook while pointing that out.
Dave C
@Hungry Joe:
Agree with this. Also, be sure to make a pilgrimage to Stone Brewing!
jl
@stickler:
dead hobo?
Did dead hobo hit the news? Did they drain the reservoir because of dead hobo pollution?
Odd what gets covered in the news.
WaterGirl
@Pee Cee: Agreed. But since I believe this is a PR move, then I can completely understand them doing it if the water doesn’t go through any further treatment.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@catclub:
That’s on Mt. Tabor/
LongHairedWeirdo
@catclub: Depends. They have two concentrations, X and C, I think. X is one in 10, and C is one in 100.
4X would be a 1 in 10,000 dilution, so there are still molecules around (there’s just so blasted *many* of them!).
Thing is, homeopathy considers a 5X remedy to be stronger than a 4X.
And they did an experiment to prove homeopathy could help tadpoles grow, and found that they could leave the remedy in the test tube, and put the test tube in the water, and it still worked. “Homeopathy is energy medicine and energy RADIATES!” chirped (or so I imagined) the author of the piece describing it. This reminds me of a friend who said he used the *ultimate* strengthening remedy on his homeopathic meds – he never took them, and just let the higher power of the greater dilution from the bottle radiating to him cure his ills. He figured if he actually had them in his house, that could only weaken the effect, so he also left them at the store (or in the office of the alternative practitioner).
ranchandsyrup
@Hungry Joe: cosign this. i miss that neighborhood. :(
Elizabelle
@stickler:
I’m with draining for a dead hobo, but not for a kid pissing into the reservoir.
And that kid — and his friends — should be looking at the mother of all community service projects all summer long, maybe through end of 2014.
$35,000 ain’t peanuts. Make an example of this kid and his tiny wee wee.
I mean, they took video of their exploits.
boatboy_srq
I’ll take urine in my water over Freedom Industries’ industrial byproducts any day.
@SatanicPanic: WIN.
@Morbo: That explains Milwaukee in a way that totally makes sense now.
@Elizabelle: Red Staters don’t read signs any more than they pay penalties to the BLM.
stickler
@Elizabelle: Oh, I fully agree there should be serious consequences for these kids. If you start a forest fire, you get part of the bill to put it out. If you cause the city to waste 35,000,000 gallons of water, you should spend months scraping gum and goose shit off the sidewalks of Waterfront Park.
celiadexter
Didn’t Gandhi drink his own urine?
maya
I got thrown out of the public pool once because I peed in it. I said to the lifeguard, who expelled me, ” Hey! Everybody pees in the pool.”
“Yeah, but not from the high diving board”, said he.
WaterGirl
@maya: ha ha ha
Bmaccnm
@Tim C.: Extinct! I hope, as I live 40 blocks downhill from the park. I’ve always said I want to die fast.
Bill Arnold
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Or, homeopathic explosives. This is the real reason you can’t bring water on a plane.
(I don’t have the nerve, or recklessness, to try this line with TSA agents.)
Comrade Carter
“The solution to pollution is dilution, so while it might gross us out to think about it, the tiny bit of birdshit that falls in the reservoir is diluted to far beyond the level of even homeopathic relevance.”
Not even close.
Homeopathic would NOT have any of the molecules in it. Assuming 200C, there is little to NO chance of any homeopathic ingredient being left after “succession”, NONE.
HinTN
“Bear Whiz Beer, it’s in the water.”
mike with a mic
@Bill Arnold:
You’d be detained for a while, along with all the circus, while DHS or the FBI was contacted. You know, someone who knows something. At which point you’d be promptly released for being a bit of a smart ass, given a stern talking to, and the TSA agents that put you through the ringer would all be screamed at for being fucking morons.
beergoggles
@Bobby Thomson:
Uhh, only while in the bladder. The moment it leaves the bladder all bets are off. There’s plenty of bacteria in a healthy person’s urethra.
Betsy
@Elizabelle: brilliant. I love bureaucrats who aren’t chickenshits. Clearly, this guy has some of the best qualities of Ron Swanson.
Graham
OK, I’ll just say it if no one else will:
I want the entire reservoir scrubbed,sterilized and disinfected!
priscianus jr
“I don’t drink water. Fish fuck in it.”
― WC Fields
Kurzleg
I was just there two weeks ago. There are signs everywhere that warn of penalties for contaminating the reservoir, all ending with “This is your drinking water!” Personally, I’d have put that statement at the top of the signs, with the list of penalties for contamination coming after that. Takes a special type of dickhead to do something like that.