Joshua Seater Urinates In Portland Reservoir, Costs City $33K To Drain

Comments

[Shelly Valdez]

06:31 PM on 06/25/2011

OHHH, PLEASE!!!! Did you see the condition of that water?? I wonder how many birds crapped in that reservoir or how many people spit in it or how much trash is floating at the bottom?? I feel sorry for the people that they say have to get their water from that reservoir. I think a city official is using their money to pad their own pockets. I'm sure that Portland has roads to be fixed or people to be fed, etc. than to spend that kind of money on draining a reservoir.

[Jeri Tonti]

05:37 PM on 06/23/2011

when this first happened there was a comment made by an official that it really wasnt the man peeing in the water that was the greatest concern, but, he had two friends with him that had thrown containers of some unknown origin in the water and they wanted to make sure there wasnt any chemical contamination...that was reported just after it happened...

[UnRed]

03:01 PM on 06/20/2011

First, urine is sterile unless there's some underlying disease. Second, haven't they heard of chlorine? Or rats, squirrels, birds et. al. with dung considerably more toxic than urine? Third, 6 oz of urine in 8 million gallons of water? Seriously? You don't have to be a physician or a zoologist to understand the insignificance of it all.

[Nathan McGowan]

02:11 PM on 06/20/2011

Complete and total overreaction. Ducks are swimming in it. Bird flu anyone?

[MSROADKILL612]

04:05 AM on 06/20/2011

For goodness sakes - what a fuss - i piss in my cities reservoir all the time - no am not going to say which city.

[Sixtracks]

02:17 AM on 06/20/2011

I thought Portland was a 'green' city?

[Devin Foreal]

09:52 PM on 06/19/2011

And yet we're cutting money for schools.

[peegan]

08:16 PM on 06/19/2011

The only yuk factor is that the city would spend that kind of money to drain a reservoir open to the debris of flora and fauna because a guy urinated (BTW urine is not waste material but a sterile solution containing your bodies excess water, minerals and hormones) in it. I find that kind of stupidity far more yukky.

[snork]

06:29 AM on 06/20/2011

"sterile solution containing your bodies excess water, minerals and hormones" -- I agree with your post entirely; the pee posed no risk. But on a related note the folk wisdom stating that urine is sterile is entirely incorrect and needs to stop being spread at the risk of actually harming people (not in the case of this story, obviously). Urine is not in the least bit, in any way sterile--how could it possibly be? The misconception comes from the point that drinking one's OWN urine poses little risk being that the urine's creator is already infected by any pathogens that it contains. That is far from the same as being sterile, though. If you drink another's pee, you most certainly can be infected by any maladies that said pee contains.

[peegan]

06:57 AM on 06/20/2011

I had always heard it was sterile so I did a quick check and the answer seems to be somewhere in between. Absent of a kidney, bladder or UTI, it does start out sterile. But it can come into contact with pathogens near the surface level of your body. Either way, I'm not lining up to drink it, mine or anyone elses. But I think it is hysterical to drain an entire reservoir when right in the video you can see a duck swimming and leaves decaying in the same reservoir.

[transe]

08:27 AM on 07/03/2011

it's generally sterile inside your body. it is when it comes out and gets contaminated by your body's flora that it becomes unsterile. that's why when you go to the doc and give a urine sample, they have you wash your genitals before you give a sample. they usually have the little wipey things, that you use before you pee in the cup.

[llisa]

06:59 PM on 06/19/2011

There was a duck floating in that same water in the last shot. Where do they think the ducks poop?

Are there no other animals and birds around? There also seemed to be decaying leaves floating on the water.

This was definitely an overreaction.

[WoodyCPM]

06:23 PM on 06/19/2011

This is the silliest thing I've ever heard. Draining an entire reservoir because someone peed in it?! You realize that the water you drink has been recycled hundreds of millions of billions of time? There is only so much water on earth and in the earth's atmosphere. No "new" water is being made, it's all just recycled. So you are probably drinking dinosaur pee.

[anigma47]

06:04 PM on 06/19/2011

David Shaff should have to pay for it,or whoever is the person making the decision. Seems like a lot of people that make idiot decisions like this are never identified? It happens so often in government ,I wonder why?

[Ditmartian]

05:03 PM on 06/19/2011

More and more and MORE it's so apparent we are living in an increasingly INSANE society.

[WoodyCPM]

06:30 PM on 06/19/2011

Every day it grows daffier and daffier.

[mahdeealoo]

04:30 PM on 06/19/2011

Ha ha. Disinfect the water like you do the city water or swimming pools. Do they really think that no one else has ever relieved themselves in this water, not to mention fish/ducks/geese and the like. This is their toilet too!

[Dave Henson]

04:08 PM on 06/19/2011

Reminds me of Judge Smalls in Caddyshack: I want the entire reservoir scrubbed, sterilized, and disinfected!

[GoodwithWood]

07:23 PM on 06/19/2011

LOL

[CheapTrick]

12:31 PM on 06/19/2011

OK, you realize that the duck at the end of the video is also doing stuff in the water, right? And al the car exhaust that just rains down into it and there's probably a few dead squirrels, too?