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After 400,000 people got sick from Cryptospiridium — in Milwaukee, WI, in 1993 — I suppose it shouldn't come as much a surprise that we'd get a call from one of them: Samantha, in Dallas (Oregon), who now drinks water from her own well. We also got a story from EvanInOR:
This is certainly a hard discussion, I grew up here in Portland, and loved the water I drank. That said, I left Portland and went to Milwaukee, WI for College. After college I started a small business and in 1993 we all got zapped by the crypto outbreak.... It literally closed our company for weeks. It sickened most of the population and caused a massive financial drain on the city.
I personally was ill for weeks, and it is dreadful, stomach cramps, like nothing I have ever felt before or since. Once you finally think you are on the mend you had a bit of rice or toast and it would start all over again. No one should have to suffer through that. Since that outbreak I drank only filtered bottled water.
Having moved back to Portland, over 10 years ago, we just last year, had enough faith in our water supply to give up on the bottled water we had delivered to our home. I love Bull Run water and I would feel bad if we had to filter it, but having been through a crypto outbreak once I never want to go through that again.
Is anybody else out there going to take filtration into your own hands if Portland's variance goes through?
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Milwaukee draws its drinking water from Lake Michigan - a heavily polluted water body that receives effluent and runoff from a densely populated area. Contrast that with Portland, where our water comes from the Bull Run Watershed - a pristine protected old-growth forest closed to humans and domestic animals. There's really no comparison. Cryptosporidium poses no significant risk to Portland's water system. This story seems sensationalist to me. I thought OPB had higher standards of journalism. This story is more akin to something you'd see on FOX news.