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Why Portland Should Have Kept Its Water, Urine and All

Posted by timothy on from the except-for-homeopathy dept.

Ars Technica has nothing good to say about the scientific understanding (or at least public understanding) that led Portland to drain 38 million gallons of water after a teenage prankster urinated into the city's water supply. Maybe SCADA systems shouldn't be quite as high on the list of dangers, when major utilities can be quite this brittle even without a high-skill attack.

13 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. just like homeopathy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Urine gets stronger the more you dilute it.
    The uncomfortable truth is that all the water has pee in it.

  2. And yet birds die in it... by MindPrison · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...all the time. It's all psychology, it's human urine - therefor it is oh so terrible. Think of all the bird-droppings, huge flocks of birds flying by...doing their thing. They carry far more diseases with them than we dare to even think of, never-mind mention in the news. But human urine? Yuck ;)

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
  3. Don't tell them that... by silviuc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fish crap in their drink along with frogs, birds and who knows what else. They have water treatment plants to make it drinkable, how the fuck do these morons get into such high positions?

    1. Re:Don't tell them that... by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

      We don't filter the water. We have an EPA waiver not to have to filter our water. Only one in the country, since the water up in the Bull Run Watershed is so pristine (no human activity allowed in the entire watershed area, over a hundred square miles, 1/3 of the water is supplied by dew drip off of fir trees).

      That doesn't change the fact that fish, birds, frogs, etc crap in the water. This whole thing is the same reason a lot of people believe in homeopathy - the idea that extremely diluted quantities of a beneficial substance still carry the same benefits. Homeopathy is basically the converse of the disgust reaction we have to inconsequentially miniscule contamination - the idea that extremely diluted quantities of a harmful substance still carry the same harm. The ISS has one of the most sophisticated water reclamation systems ever made, whose filtration provides cleaner water than what you get out of the tap. But people are still "grossed out" over the fact that astronauts are effectively drinking their own pee. Out of sight, out of mind.

      The environment is dirty, and our bodies are fully capable of surviving with that dirt. This incessant demand for absolute cleanliness is probably the cause of the rapid increase in allergy rates. The prevailing theory is that allergies are result of over-cleanliness. Our immune systems are supposed to gradually build up resistance and tolerance to all sorts of pathogens and contaminants. But our modern, ultra-clean standard of living deprives our immune systems of gradual exposure to those substances. Then when we encounter it for the first time, our body goes nuts and overreacts, causing an allergic reaction.

      Our water comes from the source much cleaner than would come out of the filtration systems used in other cities.

      The cleanest water you can get is distilled. You slowly raise the temperature to boil off contaminants with a boiling point lower than water. At the boiling point of water you're getting pure H2O. The residual is everything with a boiling point higher than water. While it's absolutely clean, it's actually bad for you because it lacks minerals and salts your body needs, and the lack of dissolved content means metal from the pipes carrying it leech into it at an accelerated rate. So it's instead packaged in plastic or glass bottles and sold in stores. Rainwater is effectively distilled, except it picks up a lot of contaminants as it floats through the air, then falls down to the ground.

      The next cleanest you can get is reverse osmosis filtered. The pores in the filters are so small that nearly all contaminants are removed. Like distilled water, it's actually too pure. They have to add minerals and salts back into it for health and taste reasons. While it's too expensive to use for most municipal water supplies, a few cities on islands or in extremely dry regions do use them to provide tap water.

      Then come the spring waters, which are naturally filtered through miles of sand and rock.

    2. Re:Don't tell them that... by Dahamma · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not true. From their site:

      How is my tap water treated?

      Bull Run water is not filtered.
      Chlorine is added to disinfect the water of any potential natural contaminants.
      Ammonia is added in a process called chloramination to ensure that water throughout the system meets federal and state drinking water regulations. Without ammonia the chlorine would evaporate by the end of the supply line.

      So, it's treated with chlorine and ammonia. And though it's not "filtered" in the decontamination sense, of course it's run through coarse filters to get large objects out of it before it goes into the pipes.

      The ammonia is especially ironic, since urea is basically what the body creates to make ammonia *less* toxic.

  4. They're just avoiding liability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The most important line in the article is the very last:

    The reservoir will reportedly cost $35,000 to clean

    $35k is nothing when compared to even the lawyer fees of a single potential frivolous lawsuit over this. All it would take is one kid getting sick (likely for completely unrelated reasons). And then they'd have to start publicly defending the decision to not clean it. I'm not saying the cleaning is the practical choice. Just that the absurdity of the U.S. legal system makes it fiscally irresponsible for the city to do anything else.

  5. Budweiser trucks seen nearby by BlazingATrail · · Score: 5, Funny

    Budweiser sent trucks to take some of the piss water away to make American style beer

  6. Lanted Ale.. by malkavian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Back in the "old days" (medieval), Beer was preserved by adding Lant, to give Lanted Ale.
    Lant is stale urine, and it acted as a marvelous preservative. So, adding urine in this fashion to that volume won't be a problem. It's just one of perception..

  7. Discussed to death on Bruce Schneier's blog... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Discussed to death on Bruce Schneier's blog. Long story short: The draining is part of a political fight between two groups who want to control and monetize the water supply. All in a city of nuts who, in this day and age, drink untreated water direct from uncovered reservoirs and streams. A lot of things to worry and wonder about there...

  8. Not Uncommon for Portland by windwalker13th · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is not the first time that Portland has emptied a reservoir. This is the only time that it has made national news. One of the times that they drained the reservoir was for when somebody was attempting to pee in it and it was unclear if the intoxicated individual had actually urinated into the reservoir.

    The reservoirs in Portland are a bit of a contentious subject. We Portlanders greatly appreciate our open air reservoirs however the City Water Bureau does not. Despite a large public outcry to keep our open air reservoirs our water department despite saying that they were working to keep our reservoirs, did not file for a waiver from the department of homeland security to keep the reservoirs open air. While most Portlanders recognize the importance of controlling access to our water supply we wish that the water department listened to public comment more and acted less like a dictator.

  9. Re:Guard by tragedy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Easily" poison 38 million gallons of water? See, this is exactly the same problem from the original article. A typical person drinks a lot less than 1 liter of water at a time, but we'll be generous to your poisoning idea and base our required dose of poison on 1 liter of water. Probably the most deadly known poison by unit mass is Batrachotoxin. In order to poison 38 million gallons of water so that every liter contains a fatal dose, you would need about 15 tons of it. 15 tons of poison produced by a particular species of frog, and then only when they eat a particular species of beetle, is pretty hard to come by. If you went with something more generally available, such as some form of cyanide, you'd need about 228 tons.

    So, your plan to poison the water supply is dastardly, evil, possibly even insidious... but not remotely practical. Sure, you could do it, but the expense would be high and the effictiveness would be relatively low since the water can be shut off centrally. You'd have a lot more luck just getting your henchmen to go on a rampage through the main street with conventional weapons.

  10. Re:Guard by gyepi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Your calculation is way off, only 14kg of Batrachotoxin would be needed to render 38m gallon of water lethal, not 15 tons. One can carry that much in a backpack, not to mention that this is for doses that are lethal to everyone (if evenly distributed); much less would be sufficient to cause serious health issues for the majority who drinks from it.

    (According to wikipedia sources 100 microgram of Batrachotoxin is lethal for a 68kg person. 100 microgram in every liter of 144,000,000 l (=38m gallon) of water requires 144,000,000*100microgram = 14.4 kg poison.)

    This is of course not a justification for draining this amount of water from the pool every time the pool is micturated upon in the fair city of Portland.

    --
    Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
  11. Re:Guard by thoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I wanted to "easily poison" a water supply, I'd just form a corporation, say one that stores chemicals meant for coal mining, and build my facility near a river that supplies a small city's water supply.

    That way, not only would I get limited liability if there was an "unforseen accident", my corporation could declare bankruptcy and dodge all lawsuits.