"5-minute shower timer"

Sounds promising, I can hardly wait for the HIT squads.

Is Randy that bored?

Why is CoP in the business of "distributing" water conservation devices? Why should CoP be competing, if that is the right word if they are giving them out free, with all the other businesses of the city that sell these devices? The plumber unions, plumbers, plumbing distributors and retail stores don't need "competition" from government when they are already contributing tax dollars to CoP. They are getting tapped from both ends.

Can I dig a well, build an outhouse, and opt out of the Portland water/sewer system?

$90K per year, just think of all the bike boxes that money would buy.

Here's a guy who has developed the ultimate water-saving device. He harvests rainwater for household use. The cost of the system is pretty minimal considering what it does. Why doesn't the Water Bureau endorse it? Because it would conserve water, cut their revenue and force their commissioner to spend their money only on mission-related items!

http://www.rwh.in/

If they didn't have the damn flow restrictors, they wouldn't need the shower timers.

I started out this comment wanting to ask what a 4-Port Toilet Fill Cycle Diverter was.

I bet someone at H20-and-S**t HQ saw the word "cycle" in the name of the aforementioned device and decided it was a Portland must-have.

I looked it up and it apparently causes less water to be sent to the bowl of the toilet during refill. Good if you have an older toilet that uses more water, I guess, but I can definitely see CoP pushing these on those of us that have the 1.5 gallon toilets now. Great...I just love plunging my toilet everytime it gets "full"...if you know what I mean.

With 24/7 fire stations, police stations, park and pool operations, water and sewer operations, etc, community centers, offices with locker rooms for people who bike or run to work, etc, etc, there are lots of places for the city to use these that don't involve giving them away. These are all good ideas that should have been standard practice long ago.

I am all for calling it out when they do something idiotic, which is all too often, but this doesn't qualify.

Now, OTOH, if they are going into facilities Paul Allen or Merritt Paulson should be paying the operating costs for, which is all too likely, that's certainly worthy of ridicule.