Just How Stupid is Portland for Dumping 38-Million Gallons of Water?

Just How Stupid is Portland for Dumping 38-Million Gallons of Water?



"...a typical urination of about 1/8 gallon in a reservoir of 38 million gallons amounts to a concentration of 3 parts per billion. That's billion with a b. For comparison, the Environmental Protection Agency's limit for arsenic in drinking water—arsenic!—is 10 ppb.

The EPA doesn't appear to have a limit for urine in drinking water, but it does limitnitrates in drinking water to 10,000 ppb, and urine does contain a lot of nitrogen, so let's use that as a proxy.

How many times would that teenager have to pee in a Portland reservoir to produce a urine concentration approaching the EPA's limit for nitrates in drinking water? About 3,333 times.

But of course urine is 95 percent water. (If you're ever trapped in rubble after a natural disaster, go ahead and drink it.) Only about 2 percent of urine is nitrogen-rich urea. That means he'd have to urinate 166,666 times for the concentration of urea to approach that of the EPA's limit for nitrates in drinking water."