The manager of a Nevada water reservoir is in trouble after he was caught taking a leak in the storage area that is the source of drinking water for California's San Francisco Bay Area.

A spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Tyrone Jue, said an investigation into anonymous complaints confirmed that the facility's maintenance man, Martin Sanchez, had urinated in the Sierra Nevada reservoir early last month.

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Officials said the 674-million-gallon reservoir had been drained for routine maintenance, ruling out any danger to public health.

Sanchez, who has a pay grade of more than US$110,000 a year, could be suspended up to a week without pay. He was up for a promotion before the complaint.

Most of the drinking water supplied to San Francisco is sourced from the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Snow in the Sierra Nevada peaks is California's biggest reservoir of fresh water, with water from the ice alone supplying 15 million acre-feet of water yearly. The Sierra Nevada provides more than half of California's developed water.

Last year, a 19-year-old boy from Portland, Oregon was charged with trespassing and public urination after he was caught peeing into the city reservoir.

After Portland authorities got wind of the incident, they started dumping water from the 35-million-gallon storage facility into sewers, but torrential rains slowed the effort. Instead, they funneled the water to a drained reservoir and rerouted the supply for non-drinking applications.

The incident was the second in less than three years that Portland drained a reservoir due to worries that someone discharged urine into the water.

TagsSierra Nevada water reservoir, water keeper, urine in reservoir, drinking water, california, San Francisco, Martin Sanchez