The original crypto scam

I see that the money pit known as the Portland Water Bureau has mismanaged the new filtration system project at the Bull Run reservoir to a price tag over $2 billion (with a "b") and climbing, with no end to the inflation in sight.

But don't worry, say the bureaucrats. We'll borrow the money, so your bill won't go up.

Uh huh.

Portland water and sewer bills are already obscenely high, and this boondoggle is going to make them worse, much worse. It's just a question of when.

And despite all the water weasels' warnings about how we're all going to die if they don't get the filters going – supposedly a parasite called cryptosporidium is coming to get us – the fact remains that Portland's drinking water is pretty fine as it is. The city is placing the blame for this ungodly expense on federal and state regulators, but those folks could grant exemptions and extensions if they wanted to. The city stopped asking for them.

The main point of this undertaking is, as it's always been, to make big profits for the contractors, with whom the water bureau types are way too cozy. A project this big, the technical details of which hardly anyone understands, being built where literally no one is allowed to go watch... well, it's a pretty open invitation to corruption, if you ask me. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody deliberately introduced crypto into the water up there just to seal the deal.

And don't forget who caved in to the feds and the state on this. It was the City Council. Steve Novick was the city water commissioner during a lot of that time; Admiral Randy handed the reins over to him. Novick is currently running to get back on the City Council in the inner southeast district. If I lived there, I'd put him down as my very, very last choice. He was so bad that he lost his last election to Chloe Eudaly, one of the worst Portland City Council members ever. The self-proclaimed genius should stay home and pet his dog.