Funny how we haven’t had real problems with those “contamination sources” for over 100 years, let alone cryptosporidium. On the other hand, several have caused illness and death in enclosed reservoirs.

-EPA letter says “the variance found in …the Safe Drinking Water Act is also not available to the City’s uncovered finished water reservoirs. That section allows the Administrator to grant a variance with an alternative treatment technique…if the alternative is at least as efficient in lowering the level of the contaminant of concern as the treatment technique specified in the rule.”-

By all testing measurements taken so far, the open reservoirs, treated as they already are, satisfy the requirement stated above, ie, there has been zero detection of harmful cryptosporidium. Can’t get any more efficient than that. At the same time, the proposed treatment techniques, as applied elsewhere, have not proven to lower said contaminant to EPA’s desired levels, reasonable or unreasonable as that may be.

Unharmful E. coli “event” was as irrelevant and inconsequential as all the previous inconsequential “events.” As Multnomah Co. Health Officer Gary Oxman has said, he doesn’t think open reservoirs pose a significant problem.

The Water Bureau and Council have conducted one long charade of blatant lying, misrepresentation, ommission, subversion, etc, culminating in the “missing letter” fiasco, that supposedly no one in the Bureau knew about for a month, and during which time they acted like they were still pursuing that variance. They went through the motions at every late stage of the ongoing game, like a hostage with a gun at his head. The public and concernced organizations have given the Bureau and Council the benefit of the doubt for years on this matter. They were used and duped.

This would be a good time to chain up to the reservoir gates in protest.