Reservoir 3 in Washington Park

PORTLAND, Ore. - Portland’s water has been given the all clear after a boil order was put into effect over the weekend, but questions why it took so long to let the public know there was E. coli in the water still lingered Monday.

Two problems cropped up during the incident. First, the timing of a second, critical test, was delayed until after the Thanksgiving holiday, and second, no system was in place to alert people all at once.

Water from Reservoir 3 tested positive for E. coli on Thanksgiving but the Portland Water Bureau waited until the day after the holiday to test it again, which is allowed under Environmental Protection Agency rules as long as it’s within 24 hours.

Still, Water Commissioner Randy Leonard said he was concerned about the delay.

“It was an issue I raised with the Water Bureau, and I’ve asked for a review of that and a timeline and some explanations. When I get to the bottom of that we’ll take the appropriate action,” Leonard said.

When asked whether the Thanksgiving holiday had something to do with the delay in the second test he said, “I hope not, because firefighters don’t take the day off on Thanksgiving and neither should any public agency charged with protecting public health.”

As far as the notification issue, when those results came back positive on Saturday, the city alerted the media and relied on Twitter, Facebook, and word of mouth.

But unlike the school district, that can send alerts to phones for things like snow days, the city does not have an emergency notification system.

When asked why the emergency notification system the police have wasn’t used, Leonard said the system was dissolved.

“We discovered in this emergency that they had done away with that system,” Leonard said. “The mayor was not happy when he learned that. “He actually asked to use that system and was told it had been removed from the budget last time without his knowledge and he was not very happy.”

He said had this happened at year ago, “We would have had some notification beyond what we had now.”

Leonard said the first priority, once Reservoir 3 is drained, is to investigate the source of the E. coli, then the system of notification.

He said the city is looking into the cost of a system like what Portland Public Schools use.