Portland dumps 38m gallons of water with pee

The Portland, Oregon, water supply is now safe again after the city dumped 38 million gallons of water from its reservoir after discovering that a teenager urinated into the water supply. The kid was caught on closed circuit television at the Mt Tabor reservoir "deliberately contaminating" the water according to Portland water administrator David Shaff. Although the health risk was small, he says customers "don't anticipate drinking water that's been contaminated by some yahoo who decided to pee into a reservoir.” Upon learning of the contamination on Wednesday, officials immediately removed the affected reservoir from service, took water quality test samples and will replace it with fresh water from another of the city's water supplies. Portland emptied 7.5 million gallons of water from the same reservoir in 2011 after another man urinated into it. Mr Shaff said, "While animal waste often found its way into the reservoir without any public health risk, there was at least a perceived difference from my perspective" on human waste. He said the city had plenty of water to meet demand and that replacing the 38 million gallons would be "easy. We're not in the arid South-west. We're not in drought-stricken parts of Texas or Oklahoma." But critics disagree saying the process is extremely wasteful and that even if urine reached the main water supply, it would not harm anyone.