Each tour this fall, we’ll feature a short report back and photos. Here is the first in our series, courtesy of member Ed Klein.

On Saturday, Sept. 3, a busload of Dill Picklers took an all-day romp to the city’s two massive Bull Run reservoirs, nestled just over a ridge from towering Mount Hood, where we learned, among many other things, that one of Portland’s favorite “facts” is actually a fiction.

Shocking as it may be to some, our water does not come from Mount Hood. Rain and snow that fall on that lofty local symbol bypass the reservoirs on their route to the Sandy River. Only the precipitation that falls on the other side of the ridge winds up in the reservoirs.

It’s better that way, purity-wise. While much of the Hood watershed is developed, the Bull Run watershed is 147 square miles of highly-protected forest. Almost no one has ever lived there. No one has ever farmed there. Access is strictly controlled. There are no recreation areas and trespassing is an illegal federal crime.

More after the jump…

The seriousness with which the Portland Water Bureau takes protection of this pristine environment was clear before we even stepped on the bus that would take we Picklers on the special tour. Everyone had to clean their shoes to remove any “alien seeds” that might be clinging to them.

Veteran Picklers were slack-jawed when they saw the bus. Previous excursions (to ghost towns, wind farms, and lumbering country) involved an aged school bus that, with a little creative paint, could resemble Ken Kesey’s Further. By comparison, the Water Bureau’s sparkling vehicle appeared to be a palace on wheels. Cloth seats! Air conditioning! Venetian blinds! It even had a bathroom.

Feeling like frequent flyers upgraded to First Class, we luxuriated in the amenities, knowing well we would likely be back in coach, contentedly, on the next trip. And off we went.

Over the Fremont, past the vastness of the Burlington Northern Sante Fe yards with the St. John’s Bridge glistened downstream, we plunged into a tangle of freeway ramps, self-storage buildings that looked like morgues for possessions, and zoomed eastward until, soon, we were in another world. As we rolled into the treescape, buildings vanished, traffic thinned, skies opened and the names of places and streets echoed the ambiance: Blue Jay Lane, Brightwood Road, East Grouse, Greenwood, Zigzag and more until we turned onto Lolo Pass Road, the route to the reservoirs.

Soon, the adventure became more of an adventure as we saw brown clouds of smoke amassing above from the nearby Dollar Lake forest fire, enough to block out views and close Lolo Pass Road to incoming traffic. Luckily, by then we would only need the road to get back out and no evacuation notices were received before we were ready to leave.

Our Water Department guide for the day was Jody Burlin, a fact-filled young woman with a dry sense of humor and an infectious giggle. The rush of information was like opening the gates of an information reservoir and here is some of what she told us:

If you ever wonder why the Sandy River is sometimes cloudy, it’s likely from Mount Hood snowmelt runoff. (But don’t worry: Remember, we’ve already learned our drinking water does not come from Hood.)

Only 20% of released reservoir water goes to city taps. The rest goes on its way down its own branch to the Sandy to help keep it healthy and flowing for fish, fisherpeople and other related splashers.

Those reservoirs on Powell Butte, Mount Tabor and Washington Park? They’re just way stations. Their water comes from Bull Run.

If you think there are two reservoirs on Mount Tabor, you’re wrong. There’s also one containing 50 million gallons, buried below ground.

Almost the whole water system (with the exception some areas in the West Hills and Alameda) is gravity fed. This is important because water is heavy and pumping it is costly.

The Bull Run Reservoirs have a back-up. It’s called ground water. A pump station is located due north of Powell Butte near the Columbia River and can be pressed into service during very dry periods when the city has to maintain a minimum flow into the Sandy to protect fish, or if the reservoirs are unusually turbid. Even then, the mix is commonly 97% Bull Run to 3% ground water.

City water is extremely soft and even the ground water has a mineral content of only 50 parts per million (compared to 200 parts per million for Evian bottled water). Even so, the city has to be careful to notify sensitive industries like microchip makers and medical specialists like dialysis clinics of any change in the mix.

Although the reservoirs are just 26 miles from the city, some 2,000 miles of pipes are needed to get the water to everyone.

You may have shaken your head on hearing news of massive and repeated water main breaks elsewhere and perhaps wondered why Portland isn’t so plagued. Three reasons: Even though Portland’s system is more than a century old, that’s still relatively young by national standards; our climate is relatively immune to the extremes of heat and cold that cause ruptures; and the soil chemistry here seems to work as a natural anti-corrosion agent.

In other words, guide Jody said, “Portland is a good place to be a pipe.”

Could a terrorist kill thousands of Portlanders by dumping poison in the reservoirs? Just impossible, she said. Besides the security on site, the reservoirs are so huge that “dilution is the solution.” Nothing that could be transported in could be strong enough to withstand all that water. The city recently did drain one of its Tabor reservoirs after a drunk young man was caught on camera urinating in it. But that was to remove “the ick factor” from the public mind rather than for any health reason.

The biggest threat to the reservoir system? You guessed it. The chance of an earthquake.

Upset about how your water bill keeps going up? Next time you get one, check the breakdown. Odds are the big increases are for sewer, which is included in the bill, not the water. And that’s because of the so-called Big Pipe program to keep sewage from overflowing at the treatment plant into the Willamette which, most will agree, is a good idea.

Still, the cost of water in Portland has doubled in the last five years but look at it this way: You can still get three gallons of it for a penny. Put that way, why haggle?

The average Portlander uses 64 gallons a day, and that amount has been dropping. The reasons include the fact that modern toilets flush with one-fifth the amount of water used by older ones; Portland’s famous conservation consciousness; and the aforementioned rise in prices. Overall demand on the system has also dropped because a loss of industries that folded or moved away.

Factoid: The average Portland uses one-third the amount of water as a resident of Las Vegas.

Think Portland is rainy? Bull Run gets 130 inches of precipitation a year, more than triple the amount as the city. This year there was so much snow left over from the winter that it was mid-July before workers could get in.

The leading inhabitants of the reservoir watershed are black bear, deer and bobcats. “It’s always exciting out here,” said guide Jody.

No logging is permitted in the watershed. Even when it was, only 20% was logged. Logging companies, trying unsuccessfully to continue logging there once released photos of horses used in the work wearing diapers to show how ecologically careful they were. It didn’t work.

In the early days, private companies provided Portland with its water and drew it right from the Willamette, where human, horse and industrial waste was also dumped. Typhoid, cholera and other illness stirred ordinary Portlanders to protest, picketing City Hall, demanding changes. The governor, who was later linked to the private companies, tried to block construction of the Bull Run reservoirs, saying (weirdly) that he believed that water from there would “cause goiter in the fairer sex.” Later, when he was offered the first glass of Bull Run water he was unrepentant. He said it lacked the taste and body of Willamette water.

By then, we were chock full of information about all that happens when we turn on a tap. We had hiked down to the headwaters of the Bull Run River and scrambled up and across a dam. Photos were all snapped and lunches had been consumed at the windy tables at Bull Run Lake.

And so, refreshed by a day in the unspoiled woods, albeit under mostly brown skies, and thrilled to be wearing a jacket when temperatures downtown were hitting 92 degrees, we boarded our luxury bus to descend from the heights for the last stop on our exploration of “Where Our Water Comes From” by enjoying where some of it goes: Whiskey, at the appropriately named Bull Run Distillery on SW Quimby. With a water chaser, of course.