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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Portland / News / Politics Leonard: Water Bureau Will Announce More Test Results At 5pm Today

Posted by Matt Davis on Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 11:16 AM

City Commissioner Randy Leonard will announce more water test results at a news conference this afternoon at 5pm, he says, announcing whether or not the "boil water" alert issued yesterday at 5pm can be lifted.

The city issued an emergency "boil water" alert yesterday after routine sampling of the Washington Park reservoir tested positive for E.coli on two separate occasions. The reservoir will now be drained of 10 million gallons of water over the next four days.

"They had a confirmed hit that I was phoned about at 1:30 on Friday, but they were then going to do some more tests," says Leonard. "We're getting some more test results today at 4 o'clock and we'll have a news conference at 5."

Leonard was on vacation last week and got the call in the middle of it. "I was in cellphone range," he says. "I always have to be accessible."

"E.coli is a common occurrence," says Leonard. "It's obviously frightening, but it's not an uncommon occurrence. We've gotten 19 positive hits since 1990, in nearly 20 years, and this is the first one where the state requires you to follow up and do an immediate second test, and this is the first one that's come back positive."

"These are significantly small samples," Leonard continues. "There is an investigation going on—we'll be draining the reservoir, and we'll inspect it closely, and try to find out what the source is."

Would armed security have prevented the problem? Does he expect the E.coli scare to play into any of the ongoing debate about whether or not to cover of filter Portland's reservoirs?

"No," says Leonard.

The news conference will take place at the Emergency Communications Center at the Water Bureau's main building on Intersate Avenue at 5pm. Sadly for us, on Thanksgiving weekend, we'll be there.

 

Comments (1) RSS

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1
1) Boiling water will kill pretty much everything in it.
2) Water filters typically will not.
3) If you are old or sick or a baby, it couldn't hurt to boil your water for the time being, regardless of where you happen to live. Well, if you're a baby maybe you shouldn't be going near the stove.
4) There's like a million kinds of E.coli, and only a few will ruin your day. They all like to live in or near poo, so E.coli tests are used to determine if there is poo in the water. So this is mostly about the poo water, less about the deadly strain of common bacteria that may or may not be there.
5) That said, it's bester to be safe than sorry (like the old folks said).
5) Sometimes spiders crawl into your mouth when you are sleeping and you accidentally eat them. We live in a pretty gross world, we just pretend that we don't. It all works out in the end.
Posted by atomic on November 29, 2009 at 3:16 PM · Report

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