Is the water safe? How do you know?

Yes, as of 4 PM, November 29 the water is safe to drink for there were no further detections of E. coli or total coliform in a large suite of water quality samples collected throughout the affected area.

What should customers do before drinking the water?

Customers should flush the water from all taps for at least 2 minutes. For individual homes, residents can run the tap until the water runs cold to flush potentially contaminated water from pipes in the house.

What about large buildings? How long should they flush their water?

Customers should flush the water from all taps for at least 2 minutes. There may not be a noticeable change in water temperature in large buildings, 2 minutes will be sufficient to flush any possible contaminated water from the building plumbing.

Have there been reported cases of people getting sick?

There are no known cases of illness where the cause has been determined to be from E. coli in tap water. People have called reporting being sick with symptoms resembling water contamination, though there are many potential causes of these ailments. Multnomah County Health Department is looking into these reports.

Has this happened before?

This is the first time the Portland Water Bureau has issued a widespread boil water notice.  PWB has detected E. coli in the past, but these were isolated and determined to not be a threat to public health. There has been previous Boil Water Notices which were due to a loss of pressure in the distribution system around a tank and limited to a very small area.

Will Reservoir 3 or other open reservoirs continue to be used?

Yes, PWB will continue to use our reservoirs. Reservoir 3 is currently off-line and will not be used until it has been cleaned and tests show no further contamination. PWB is building replacement storage that will allow us to disconnect our open reservoirs by the end of 2020.

What are you doing to fix this problem?

Reservoir 3 has been isolated from the drinking water system and is being drained. Proactive monitoring in the distribution system will continue.

Is the PWB continuing to test for contamination? How much and how often?

Daily water testing will continue in the affected area for several more days. PWB regularly tests for fecal contamination throughout the water system four days per week.

What was the cause of the contamination? When will you know?

E. Coli is an indicator of fecal contamination, which could come from either human or animal wastes. PWB is in the process of draining Reservoir 3. Once the reservoir is drained it will be investigated for any possible sources of contamination.

What is the PWB doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

PWB will continue to proactively sample and test the water at locations throughout the system for indication of fecal contamination.