A royal flush in Portland

DUST IN THE WIND
by Bill Boyle
The City of Portland, Oregon recently allowed 38,000,000 gallons of water to be flushed from a city reservoir after surveillance video showed a local youth urinating in the treated water.
Portland officials simply said that they have plenty of water and would rather be safe than sorry, so they literally flushed the water down the drain.
The amount of water seems mind-boggling for us in San Juan County. We are holding onto every last drop of water during another drought and seem to understand that wildlife occasionally take a leak in our water sources.
The amount of water flushed through the system represents more than 100 acre-feet of water.
If Monticello residents matched their peak use of culinary water every day for four months, it wouldn’t match the amount of water lost in Portland.
It represents about two months of total water use, culinary and secondary, in Monticello or Blanding.
If a Monticello commercial user were to use that amount of water under the city’s new secondary water rates, it would go a long way toward paying for the new meters for the secondary system. The total water bill for the month would exceed $47,000.
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There is a lot of excitement in Monticello about the opening of the new Family Dollar store on East Center Street. A grand opening is scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
What is a little troubling was an announcement on the same day that Family Dollar corporate headquarters will cut jobs and close about 370 stores as it tries to reverse sagging sales and earnings. The discount store will also permanently lower prices on about 1,000 basic items.
Family Dollar Inc., which operates 8,100 stores, did not provide details on how many jobs it would cut.
Of course, the closures do not impact the Monticello store.
Analysts state that a strengthening national economy may be hurting sales at dollar stores in many locations. Judging by the number of customers in the first few days of business, there was no sign of that problem at the new store in Monticello.
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We apologize for our goof in the April 9 issue of the San Juan Record. In a photo accompanying a story about a new office location for CPA Steve Black, we identified Black’s assistant, Amber Black, as his wife, Shauna Black.
Our apologies… sometimes we can confuse issues that should be Black and white.