Looking into the endless gray this week, all I wanted was color. The rain hammered on my roof during the nights, with leaf-stuffed gutters overflowing, water gushing by my window. Of course! Drainpipes! The solution to filling my eyes with color and pattern and my brain with delightful memories of prior travels. Thus today’s barrage of photographs, since pipes held my interest for years on end, always with faint plans to use them eventually for abstract montages.

Of course you don’t get away today with just admiring rusting pipes. Too pressing the problem – in Portland and elsewhere – of health issues associated with lead in the water.

The nation, for the most part, knows about Flint, MI and the water troubles they experienced. The crisis there has become synonymous with environmental disaster. Turns out, Portland is worse.

Since the late 1990s, samples have shown Portland exceeding the federal safety threshold for lead 11 times. In 2017, after Portland had once again surpassed that threshold, OHA required the water bureau to build a corrosion control treatment facility, according to Salis’ letter. Water from the Bull Run watershed is naturally corrosive, which can cause lead from copper plumbing and fixtures to leech into people’s homes. By building a facility to make Portland’s water less corrosive, the bureau expects to reduce the amount of lead dissolving from old plumbing into stagnant water. The facility is slated to be completed by April. (Ref.)

Here is the water bureau’s January 2022 response after decades of complaints:

Some of the actions the Water Bureau is taking include:

• Treating the drinking water to reduce lead and copper;
• Offering free lead-in-water testing to all residential customers and childcare providers;
• Increased education and outreach to customers through mailings to multifamily residences and all homes built between 1970 – 1985; 
• Actively managing drinking water in the distribution system to maintain the effectiveness of corrosion control treatment; And
• Proactively partnering with the Oregon Health Authority and Multnomah County Health Department.

I leave it to you to assess the quality of government/management in this city when you consider this problem was known for 30 years now.

In case you’re worried: The water bureau offers free lead-in-water testing to all residential customers and childcare providers. People can contact the LeadLine at leadline.org or 503-988-4000 to receive a free lead-in-water test.

And since we are in a practical mood today, here are 9 gutter fails that are slowly killing your house….only half joking, a beloved neighbor of ours had utterly expensive damage from rain water making its way into the walls and house foundation.

Children are, of course, the ones most at risk. They are often exposed to multiple sources of lead contamination: the water they drink, the dust they inhale from the paint used in older houses or contaminated soil in poorer neighborhoods often build adjacent to industrial sites. Parents who work in certain industries – automotive repair shops for example – can inadvertently bring lead particles home on their clothing. Kids are also surrounded by toys that expose them to lead:

“Lead softens the plastic and makes it more flexible so that it can go back to its original shape. It may also be used in plastic toys to stabilize molecules from heat. Lead dust can be formed when plastic is exposed to sunlight, air, and detergents that break down the chemical bond between the lead and plastics.” The CDC recommends to keep plastic toys away from young children who put their hands in their mouths after or during play.

Lead poisoning has serious consequences, developmental delay and learning difficulties included. Here is a link to the Mayo Clinic site that describes what to be on the look-out for symptoms.

And if all this is not enough justification to dig into my drainpipe archives, then maybe this is: Drainpipes are having a moment after homophobic Politician arrested at Gay Sex Party. (A right-wing Hungarian politician tried to avoid being arrested at a party in Belgium during lockdown by climbing out of the windows and down a drain pipe.) Everything that puts shade on the ruling Fidesz party is welcome….. (a rival lawmaker in Hungarian parliament, Zoltán Varga, reportedly brought a drainpipe to the floor of the legislature to use as a prop in a recent speech railing against the ruling Fidesz party’s hypocrisy.)

And here is a piece of music that captures sounds of rain and multiple rhythms when it runs, or dips or plops or gushes down the pipes…beautiful composition by John Luther Adams (2009.)

Let’s end with Ford Maddox Ford. (The entire wonderfully snarky poem can be read here.)

In the Little Old Market-Place

(To the memory of A. V.)

It rains, it rains,
From gutters and drains
And gargoyles and gables:
It drips from the tables
That tell us the tolls upon grains,
Oxen, asses, sheep, turkeys and fowls
Set into the rain-soaked wall
Of the old Town Hall.

Here’s to the next 8 days that are supposed to be entirely dry!