Man urinates in water, US city flushes 8M gallons

[AsahinaKimi]

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- Call it the big flush.

Because a 21-year-old man was caught on a security camera urinating into a city reservoir, Oregon's biggest city is sending 8 million gallons of treated drinking water down the drain.

Portland officials defended the decision Monday, saying they didn't want to send city residents water laced, however infinitesimally, with urine.

Public health officials say, however, that urine is sterile in healthy people and that the urine in the reservoir was so diluted -- perhaps a half pint in millions of gallons -- that it posed little risk.

Some people in the city, in the suburbs and around the world called the flush an overreaction, especially since animals such as ducks contribute waste routinely and, sometimes, die in the water.

more...
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/odd/news/20110625p2g00m0dm024000c.html

[glen123098]

1. That's far from the worst thing in your water.

[Exultant Democracy]

2. Someone needs to appoint/elect some new officials. These people are clearly too stupid.

Sure Portland doesn't face the same water pressures that a lot of the country but water treatment is something which is serious, expensive, and shouldn't be left in the hands of knuckleheads.

[lib2DaBone]

3. What about Fluoride and large doses of Prosaic in the water?

I know.... Fluoride is good for you.

[Dreamer Tatum]

11. Prose in water is never good, no matter how prosaic. nt

[jberryhill]

13. In New Jersey, it comes from the Passaic River...

Which is a fairly prosaic river as these things go.

[progressoid]

15. I prefer my water to be prosaic.

People think is so poetic to drink that other highfalutin stuff, but I disagree.

[cliffordu]

16. Beat me to it.......

:rofl:

[Monk06]

22. I felt that !!!!!!

[Hawkowl]

20. Portland water is not fluoridated

Neither is the water treated. It merely goes through some coarse filtering from the mountain reservoir before it is directly fed into our faucets.

[NYC_SKP]

4. What about the dogs and cats that probably pee in the water. And all the FISH!!!

Is there something particularly dangerous about 21-year-old human pee in 8,000,000 gallons of water?

:hi:

[TheMadMonk]

14. W. C . Fields:- I don't drink water; fish fuck in it.

[cliffordu]

17. Mebbe he could piss 7 million.....??

:hi:

[joshcryer]

5. Western waste never ceases to amaze me. Never.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

[Anakin Skywalker]

6. .

[tavalon]

9. The individual was stupid

The government reaction to teh stupid was monumental fail.

Oh wait, you didn't really want an answer, did you?

[Shagbark Hickory]

7. Hey we release our treated sewage (and I suppose some untreated) into the source of our drinking h2o

Of course the lake prolly has a few hundred million gallons on that reservoir.

[Xithras]

23. Most of Los Angeles drinks at lease some treated wastewater.

There are over 6 million people living in the California Central Valley, most of whom live in cities in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river watersheds. Virtually every city in the valley dumps its treated wastewater into one of those rivers or their tributaries. That water flows into the Delta, where it gets sucked up and sent to Southern California taps.

Once people get over get over the "Eww gross" factor, the actual science is undisputable. Humans spent millions of years drinking dirty water, and most still do today. The treated wastewater we dump into our rivers is generally cleaner than the water we're dumping it into. Drinking that stuff isn't hurting anyone.

[Poll_Blind]

8. And I contrast stories like this with what seems like an incautiously lax response to Fukushima...

...fallout on the West Coast. And come up wanting.

PB

[pipi_k]

10. Human urine...bah!!! Amateurs!!!

For the first five years or so we lived here, our water came from a spring house.

Every year Mr Pip would have to go up the hill and muck it out.

Frogs played merrily in it. Deer and all sorts of other critters walked through the small spring stream between it and its source further up the hill.

We eventually had a well dug, and the spring now feeds two ponds in the yard. One year the lines got clogged. Up the hill went Mr P with a compressor or something. Via hand held radio he told me to turn on the water line in the cellar, which I did.

Out the other end...in the spring house...frog parts and pieces exploded from the line. I guess one of them got stuck and couldn't get out.

Anyway, whatever was in the water we drank, it sure was tasty. Our well water tastes crappy, and it's full of minerals. The iron content is annoyingly high and turns stuff brown all the time.

I miss our frog infested spring water... :7

[jberryhill]

12. It's a good thing the birds all hold it when they fly over

duh.

This news was first reported in the IP Daily.

[Xithras]

18. Lol. That reminds me.

I've made a point, several times, to stop and piss in Hetch Hetchy while hiking in Yosemite (I live near the park and hike it every summer). It's my own private protest against 'the lake that should not be'. I mentioned that here on DU many years ago and had another poster excoriate me for my confession. "Hey! Don't you know that we have to DRINK THAT WATER here in San Francisco!?!?! You're pissing in my drinking water asshole!"

To which, I simply replied... "Where do you think the bears piss?"

:toast:

[Bonobo]

19. They should haver asked Bear Grylls if it was safe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEIYNvwXD0Q

[Synicus Maximus]

21. A few years ago some radio host called the Atlanta Water

Department and asked about rumors that there was di-hydrogen monoxide in the Atlanta water supply. They came out with and official statement to the effect that there was absolutely no di-hydrogen monoxide in the water.

[Odin2005]

24. People's superstitions about "contamination" never cease to amaze me.

If you give people perfectly pure water that was purified from waste water people are grossed out and refuse to drink it, as if it somehow magically retains a memory of being in sewage, it's bizarre.

[ImNotTed]

25. Halle Berry in

Meet Dorothy Dandridge.

True story, and much, MUCH worse.