A couple of years ago 7.8 million gallons of drinking water worth about $40,000 were discarded because a drunk guy was caught on camera while urinating in an open air reservoir in Portland.
David Shaff from the Portland Water Bureau admitted that the Bureau often finds bodies of dead animals in the key drinking water reservoir of Portland but hasn’t even considered taking such drastic measures as discarding the water in any of those cases.
The case with the 21-year-old drunk guy who chose to urinate in the town’s water supply reservoir was “different” according to Shaff. The guy admitted that “it was a stupid thing to do” and told the officials that he had no idea this was a drinking water reservoir. No charges were pressed against him.
According to the Water Bureau the urine of a single man in a huge water reservoir was a reason legitimate enough to throw away all that drinking water but dead animals in the reservoir did not present any kind of a problem. A new covered drinking water reservoir was constructed soon after the incident which helped in avoiding such unfortunate wastes of clean water.
SOURCE: [factswt.com]
