The moderate drought conditions are based on the below-average snow pack, which fills the Bull Run reservoir during the summer months. The reservoir is currently pretty much full from all the recent rains, so there isn’t room for more water now. The rain we’re still getting will keep it full for the next month despite the 38M gallon flush.
As noted a few times in this thread, water is not treated between the open reservoir and people’s homes. It is treated before getting to this reservoir.
This is utterly baffling to me. In that I can’t understand how anyone who drinks such water willingly could ever think to complain about what is contained in the water. I just don’t get it.
I’m curious to know how many Portlandians filter/treat the water at personal expense in their homes.
The P is also silent in bath.
In my solely anecdotal experience, certainly no more in Portland than other places I’ve lived. And certainly fewer than in Southern California (again, only my experience).
I think many people have an unrealistic idea that their water travels through completely sterile hermetically sealed chambers between the water treatment plant and their faucets, after being purified to nothing but H2O. The water here tastes better than anywhere else I’ve lived, and we don’t have incidents of mass sickness from tainted water. It’s a perception issue, nothing more.
UPDATE - they didn’t actually flush all the pee-contaminated water. Some of it was instead diverted to an adjacent decommissioned reservoir. There are a variety of excuses – it was taking too long to empty into the sewer, it’s a “test” to see if water can be held long-term in the reservoirs when they are all decommissioned next year, they wanted to make the other reservoir more attractive – but the outcry probably had something to do with that as well.
I believe that water already does get used for that. For washing dishes, taking showers, watering the lawn, washing the car. Only a very small fraction of that water would actually have gone into people’s bodies. Of course, that fraction would be the contaminated part.