Portland shuts eight million gallon reservoir after one man was caught peeing in it

One man caught urinating into Portland's Mt. Tabor reservoir on Wednesday morning caused panic - forcing the city to dump almost 8 million gallons of drinking water at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars.



Police were called to the open air reservoir, which supplies some of the city's 500,000 residents with their water, after surveillance cameras captured the unidentified 21-year-old relieving himself by the water's edge.



While the police did not arrest or charge the man, this is the fourth contamination incident in five-years for the controversial reservoir, causing them to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars dumping millions of gallons of drinking water each time.

Open Air: Mt. Tabor reservoir is visible in the foreground of this picture while the city of Oregon, Portland is seen in the background

Because the urinating man was not charged or arrested he has not been named, but Portland Police added that he may yet face ramifications for his actions - even though he assumed the reservoir was a sewage plant.



Chief: Water Bureau Administrator David Shaff has made the decision before the dump almost 8 million gallons of water from Mt. Tabor's reservoir and did so again this week

'It'll kind of depend on what the surveillance video shows,' said Sgt. Pete Simpson, a police spokesman. 'He's not out of the water yet.'



Mt. Tabor has caused a nightmare for city planners, who have to pay upwards of $36,000 each time to dump the 7.8 million gallons of drinking water.



However, David Shaff, administrator for the Water Bureau admitted that while the bureau regularly finds dead animals in the reservoir, only human waste and disease has caused them to dump the contents in the past.

'Do you want to drink pee?' said Shaff to Oregon.Live , when asked why this is.



When pressed on what damage a miniscule amount of human pee could do to almost 8 million gallons of otherwise perfectly fine drinking water, Shaff said it was a political decision.



'It has nothing to do with scientifically,' said Shaff.



'Most people, are gonna be pretty damn squeamish about that.'



The water that will be dumped would have sold for a retail value of $28,500, and the disposal fees are about $7,600.



Indeed, Portland city Commissioner Randy Leonard, who has responsibility for the Water Bureau said that he 'was going to have a Coke with my lunch today', when asked about the incident by Oregon.Live.

Mt. Tabor is no stranger to controversy over the public's ability to gain access and urinate into its fresh waters.

Caught in the Act: This very grainy CCTV footage from 2011 shows Joshua Seater urinating into Mt. Tabor

In June 2008, two people were caught skinny dipping and the entire reservoir was spared from being drained only because they were offline at the time.



Last month the Portland City Council approved an $80 million contract to build a new reservoir at Powell Butte that will eventually help mitigate closing open-air storage at Mt. Tabor.

The uncovered reservoirs were again in the news in early December 2009 when an E. coli outbreak warning was issued for Portland tap water - leading to the city asking citizens to boil their tap water.



And in August 2012, a 23-year-old man who urinated into the reservoir pleaded guilty to misuse of a reservoir and been sentenced to community service.



Joshua Seater: A security camera caught Seater urinating into the Mount Tabor reservoir in June 2011

Joshua Seater also faced five days in jail.



A security camera caught Seater urinating into the Mount Tabor reservoir in June 2011.



'Within a split second of me taking a urine in there, right afterwards, I felt guilty,' he told KATU at the time. 'I knew I did wrong when I did it.'



The incident led the Portland Water Bureau to drain the 7.5 million-gallon reservoir at a cost of about $36,000. The action helped swell the seemingly minor act into a national news story.



'Josh Seater isn't necessarily a bad person, he just did a really stupid thing,' said David Shaff, administrator for the Portland Water Bureau.



Health officials said the urine posed little risk to the public because it represented a relative drop in a multimillion-gallon bucket.



Animals routinely deposit waste in the water without creating a public health crisis or spurring the city to drain the system.



At the time, Shaff acknowledged the risk was small, but said the bureau did not want to serve tainted water to customers and 'we did all of the things that we felt were necessary to protect public health.'



Shaff said restitution would have been a difficult case to make because emptying the reservoir was a judgment call.

