that was kinda funny... never thought cnn would be making funnies: 'urine big trouble, pal.' lols...
yeah, they don't know how to treat the water... meaning the reservoir in question does not have a treatment facility as the water has already come from the treatment facility.
the issue to dump the water is because of two issues: ethics and the law.
the epa says that all open reservoirs have to be covered by 2015 and the to keep natural contaminates out of the water and the water district says now that they know someone has peed in the water, it's not ethical to deliver that water to their customers.
so their plan is to dump the water and then close that reservoir.
pretty neat.
now that i've thought about it some more, that is really very neat. can you imagine if that water supply was controlled by a for profit corporation like... let's say... umbrella (umbrella is a fictional company known for doing some fucked up things for profit in the resident evil story lines)? umbrella would do something like use a mathematical formula to decide if the cost is worth maintaining the quality and probably just keep pumping that water to it's paying customers.
let's take the recent general motors issue regarding faulty ignition switches in their cobalt cars that have resulted in a lot of deaths and injuries; it's sort of the same concept. npr's
wait, wait... don't tell me radio show summed it up best:
"it was a historic leap when america saw the first female ceo of a major car company could be just as much a weasel as any man. mary barra of g.m. was grilled on capitol hill about the company's latest scandal. turns out that they knew for years that one of their cars were defective and they never did anything about it. it wasn't big deal they said; it was just if you drove a chevy cobalt and happened to jostle the keys, the engine would turn off, the brakes and air bags would go dead, and the radio would only play christian rock."
they might have been joking about the christian rock.
anyway. they probably used a similar 'risk management' formula to decide what was more important: quality or profits. the determining outcome would have resulted in quality being more favorable (don't get me wrong, the profits are always number one but...) since the cost of law suits would have cut into the profit margin... it would have been at this time they shifted into a 'risk mitigation' method of operations which means initiate a recall immediately and try to settle out of court... public records are bad for profit margins... er... and this relates to the water authority because...
now that i think about it, they probably decided to stop selling that water to their customers because the public already knew someone peed in their drinking water and couldn't sell it. the formula says it's cheaper to dump the water and close the reservoir because they had to anyway.
humanity so disappoint.