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Some Water & Sewer Plants May Not Be Y2K Compliant 156

Posted by Roblimo from the run-in-circles-scream-and-shout dept.
Thabenksta writes "According to a Reuters News Article, over half of the United States' water treatment plants may not be y2k ready. This may result in backed up sewers, and undertreated water."
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Some Water & Sewer Plants May Not Be Y2K Compliant More

Some Water & Sewer Plants May Not Be Y2K Compliant

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  • What planet are you from? Small towns don't have pubic water and sewer? Each house has its own private water and waste facilities!!?? What kind of crack have you been smoking the last, oh say 50 years or so?

    Um, where do you think I'm getting the well water from? I have a load of 4L bottles that I send to a friend's place, which is about a 15 minute drive from where I live, in the capital city of Newfoundland. Many of my relatives in Ontario chose to dig wells, too. Basically, the water doesn't have so much Cl in it, which is a good thing.

    Those "rural water coops" are awful. The water quality is much worse than even city water. I'd rather *not* have to boil my water after it comes out to avoid "beaver fever," thank you very much.
  • Out of curiousity, what kind of engineer works on sewage lines? Is that a Civ E thing?

    -Chris
  • Lets just hope its cold enough for snow and it isn't raining. With that wonderful milwaukee dual storm/sewer system, that could only add to the problem. Although rain would delute it.

    Besides, all the sewage we pump into lake michigan just ends up in chicago anyways. :)
  • No matter where I look at, and no matter where I listen: "Millennium, Millennium, Millennium, Y2K, Y2K, Y2K, Y2K - We have a problem!" Even serious news magazines here in Germany are going mad about it.

    Now, finally, /. joins the chorus.

    I was already afraid that you /. editors might not have noticed, that the world is coming to an end, since not every second story is about Y2K.

    Thanks for finally figuring that the end is near, and pleeeze, keep us well-informed.

    Thanks. -ms

  • In USA the Y2K-awareness is very high, and has been so for quita a long time. And still, such a key part of the infrastructure has been overlooked. Isn't it *a bit late* to realize that now, less than a month away from the shift? Someone's in big trouble now...

  • I used to program control systems in the UK. We where asked to develop some PLC software for a water company that will remain nameless to control water treatment. To cut a long story short my boss at the time told me not the make the software Y2K comp (this was 1996) cos in a few years time they would need to pay us again to fix it. This really pissed me off and I wrote the software fully compliant but left it commented out so it could be fixed later on by the poor sod given the job of untangaling my code. I left the company shortly afterwards. So if you are English and are panicing about your water just hope all the bullied coders did what I did back then.
  • But then I remembered I took the Y2K pledge.

  • The inflationary effect depends on just which of the money supply variables is the true determinant of inflation.
    • If it be "M0" (which is essentially "Hard Cash"), then there will be an inflationary effect directly correlated with the amount of cash that the US Treasury issues.

      I agree that this probably isn't the right measure, as there's reasonably more to money supply than this.

    • If it be "M1" (which adds in bank deposits), then you'd expect there to be no net effect, because all people do is to pull out deposits and turn them into cash, right?

      This is closer to the truth than claims about M0.

      But. I prefer another scenario...

    • The "hard cash" money supply increase comes at the "cost" of people diminishing both:
      • Amounts on deposit (e.g. - amounts that would be considered to be in M1, M2, and possibly some of the more abtruse money supply measures) with the result that from an inflationary point of view, they are "a wash."

        There will also be...

      • Amounts pulled out of long term savings, whether by cashing in investments or by choosing not to invest.

        These amounts unambiguously increase the money supply regardless of which variation you prefer...

  • i think this is representative of where most of the fear about y2k is coming from: no one really knows what's gonna happen. who woulda thunk that the water coming out of your faucet wouldn't be y2k compliant?

    makes me think of Nightfall by Issac Asimov.

  • Why is the government involved in regulating water, anyways? If we only opened up water service to the free market, then people would buy water from those companies who are prepared and we never would have had a Y2k problem in the first place!...

  • Re:This could be bad (Score:3)

    by Guy Harris ( 3803 ) <guy@alum.mit.edu> on Saturday December 11, 1999 @02:42PM (#1468690)
    Anyone remember a few months ago the story about a town that was doing Y2K tests on their sewage system and raw sewage shot up from the sewers and flooded the streets?

    Yes. The news article I saw recently (it was an old article, but I think it was linked to from the Jon Katz article here) didn't indicate, as I remember, whether the problem was that a not-Y2K-ready system got confused and dumped raw sewage, or that, when they shut the power off to simulate a power failure, the system got confused and dumped raw sewage - in which case the system

    1. isn't necessarily not Y2K-ready;
    2. has what's arguably a worse problem, given that there are reasons why power could go out other than a not-Y2K-ready system in some electricity supplier.

    If that's the case, one hopes they've fixed the problem by now - for reasons having nothing to do with Y2K....

    I'm also curious whether part of the problem being reported involved, for example, no testing or contingency plans having been completed by June 1999 (as per the article saying

    The report said fewer than half of the drinking water utilities had completed all phases of Y2K preparations, including contingency planning and testing, as of June 1999, the date of the last industry survey.

    in which case the systems might not actually be broken, or there might not be a need for the contingency plans.

    On the other hand, testing doesn't ipso facto guarantee that the systems won't have a problem, so that particular knife cuts both ways; there may well be systems that passed their testing but fail anyway.

    (My personal suspicion is that many optimists will be surprised by problems occurring that they didn't expect to happen, and many pessimists will be surprised by problems not occurring that they did expect to happen. I suspect we've evolved not to like uncertainty, and tend to become sure of things even when the evidence is equivocal....)

  • Hi all, I would like to point out that this warning that is being cited is not new. There were several press articles in the UK computing arena about 6 months ago concerning Millennium compliance problems with UK water treatment and sewage treatment plants. In particular, I live in a large village (Tilehurst) in Reading (very near London). Both Reading and a large chunk of the London area fall under the control of Thames Water for their water and sewage treatment. The Thames Water computer system apparently had a date problem inside the system which controls the release of raw sewage into the sea. The system operates via a cut-off date/time combo, after which it will stop pouring sewage into the sea. Unfortunately, last I heard, the system date will "overflow" to 1900 (or something similar) and will thus never reach the stop time. A word of advice: don't go swimming in the sea anywhere in Britain (or anywhere) very soon after the Millennium, let them clarify the situation first. Surfers beware! :-) Furthermore though, things like this aren't a major problem as one would expect somebody to notice the potentially "damaging" YK2 side-effects like these, and manually interrupt them - hopefully before long term ecological damage is done. disclaimer: I'm not a YK2 nut, I don't expect to be let down by such fundamental services. Most of these stories are excessively overstated and, whilst I would consider their potential implications, I believe that it's the more subtle things that we should "worry" about. E.G. I'm more concerned that the cash machine will have run out of money from all the party goers than that the bank has lost all my money.
  • I've also found a few river plants that are not y2k compliant. I'm not sure if they'll suddenly die of or have a population explostion on 1/1/00. Fortuanatly, my cabbages are y2k ready.

    Sorry, couldn't resist. I miss parsed the article header to read `plants that grow in water and sewers'.

  • The water where I live is usually brownish anyway. People boil it before giving it to their plants.

    I think Y2K will be a big boon to watter bottlers.


  • What will they think of next. I personally think that y2k is the greatest hoax of the millenium. and personally, non-y2k complient sewer systems is the funniest thing i've heard since i heard about y2k!

  • ewww (Score:1)

    by Bocephus ( 6835 )
    Thank the heavens for septic tanks, then.

  • Well, that's why I said the crap is broken down.
    =)
  • I don't think many water/sewer systems are totally reliant on computers. This may mean overtime for infrastructure workers, but is not likely to be of interest to the average citizen.
  • Not that I'm bragging, but I sure am glad that I live in an area where well water is a viable alternative to the public sewage other people drink. We have our waters tested regularly and it's alot more pure than a majority of the bottled water being sold these days. Of course if on January 1, 2000 the power goes out, and Mexico invades I guess I'll still be screwed. Oh well...

  • Well.... (Score:4)

    by Wire Tap ( 61370 ) <frisina@nOsPaM.atlanticbb.net> on Saturday December 11, 1999 @02:15PM (#1468708)
    ... at least if the planes crash, they will have a nice soft layer of sewage to hit. ;-)
    ==============================
    Fran Frisina (franf@hhs.net)
    Yes, you can make money on the web!
    http://www.zero-productions.com/money
  • For those of you in the City of Toronto, ON, Canada.. Would be interested and happy to know that Toronto Utilities and Toronto Hydro have been sending out flyers saying that their water treatment plants and hydro are all Y2K compliant. The water treatment plants are run by 2 separate power sources incase one of them goes down for any reason..

    Just though other Torontonians may be interested.

  • ... (Score:2)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )
    Man, talk about a buffer overflow. Gotta go get the plunger now... yeesh....
  • maybe, but that someone isn't who you think it is.

    They do in fact perform operations on the date because the various control systems usually operate on a "do this until" such a date/time combo. Read my main post to this article for details of a real problem that _could_ occur due to this.

    Jon.
  • Actually a breakdown of this sort will be far worse in a big city than a small one. Think about it - if you live somewhere where just about everyone has a backyard, they can dig a hole and toss it there for a couple of days - unpleasant but it will be covered up and out of the way. In a large city like I live in (Boston) where you have hundreds of people in one building and no yard space, people will have no option but to toss it in the gutters. Assume each person "excretes" a pound a day, and you could have literally 300 lbs of shit in the gutters of one block in many boston neighborhoods. If this wacky weather continues and its above freezing, you have a major health crisis waiting to happen. This is not fear mongering or hysteria. This is a simple mathematical and biological extrapolation of what could happen if the sewage system backed up for ONE DAY.

    And lets face it, are the couple of guys who know how to run the manual backups for an automated plant gonna be available on the day after the biggest party night of the year which also happens to be saterday, ie two days before they have to worry about being back at work?

    My very honest advice is to call your city hall and ask if any automated systems in water and sewage treatmant have been tested for Y2K compliance. If they don't give you an answer you're comfortable with, you have a few choices:

    1) Don't worry about it until jan 1st and then deal with it however you choose.

    2) Put aside several gallons of water for drinking. For toiletries, make sure you have at least two large buckets, a toilet seat that will sit on them without you falling in, some heavy duty trash bags, and about 30 bls of clumping cat litter (preferable the kind with baking soda, or you can get a couple of boxes and mix it in.)

    3) If you live in a densely populated area and don't trust your neighbors to take the sanitary percautions just described, and you are getting worrying responses from your local gov, I would think seriously about celebrating with some friends farther into the burbs, or being prepared to get out of town for a few days if things do go wrng. Its not gonna cause the sort of widespread panic that the lights going out might, but the possible long term effects are actually _far_ more severe.

    -Glad to be living in one of the better ranked cities for Y2K preparedness,

    Kahuna Burger

  • Excellent post, Wayne.

    I've been an employee of the Calgary Waterworks for over 10 years, and while I do not speak for them , just for myself, etcetera, I can confirm:

    • your description of the standard controls as always having a manual mode is completely correct and AFAIK, industry-wide. Nobody in their right mind would build critical systems any other way - automation can screw up for lots of reasons, not just Y2K. And, besides, if a pipe springs a leak, who wants to run back to a control centre to turn off the pump? You want it off *NOW*.
    • The industry may still have had a lot of stragglers (mostly the very small plants, I bet) last June, a lot has happened since then. It's been a busy year. Besides the Y2K checks and upgrades themselves (and I think we found very, very few programs or embedded systems that needed replacement, and none were really critical), most of the preparation is just setting up a heavy shift schedule so that lots of people are there to run things manually, Just In Case.
    • Calgary had a "dry run" at the end of November - not because it was that late before we were ready, but because we wanted all the operators to have the procedures fresh in their minds on New Years Eve. We tested both the equipment with a date rollover, and the people with simulated shutdowns that required manual intervention. Everything -and everybody- passed with flying colours.
    • Electricity is a concern, sure, but not a big one. Besides the fact that the electrical industry is similarly hard at it, most water/sewer systems already have backup generators ready for "ordinary" risk of power outage already. Slashdot readers may be interested to know that we, for one, are now reconsidering our plans to leave the grid at 6PM New Years Eve. Not just because the latest news from our electrical suppliers is so reassuring, but because their growing concern is that all their big customers, like us, will leave the grid for several hours, then come back on - creating a real downswing-then-upswing in demand that will be very hard for them to handle. Too much Y2K-preparation (by others) could be a larger risk for them than Y2K itself! So we may just stay on the grid - (but with the generators ready to go, of course)
    • And if worst came to worst, don't forget there's some slack time to work on things before the water actually runs out. Water plants and pumps mostly just keep reservoirs filled - in January, with no irrigation going on, these have a day or two of supply in the reservoirs (in most systems).
    In short, I not only echo Wayne's confidence in the supply, I'll go so far as to say that this is about the least of our worries.

    Please, everybody, just calm down.

  • Interesting point. There are some systems that can suffer from water hammer. If I were the guy running the plant, I'd have all the critical pumps and valves under manual operation that night anyhow, and switch them back to auto after I saw that the control system was behaving. For many systems, as a later post points out, it just doesn't matter -- A valve that takes 5 minutes to close just doesn't cause that much of a problem.

    I can think of one possible water-hammer problem, though. I programmed the embedded controllers that control the valves of a 96" (diameter) pipeline that carries water from a reservoir to San Jose, CA. To put that in perspective, I believe an old volkswagen could fit inside that pipe. The pipe is very long... it takes hours to drive from one end of it to the other. One of the engineers on that job told me that if one of the downstream valves were shut suddenly (suddenly means about 5 minutes, for valves this big), the immense inertia of the many tons of fast moving water hitting that valve would rip the pipe out of the ground.

    Because of that, my embedded controllers contain a program that sequences the valves, shutting down the most up-stream one first, then moving down-stream in sequence.

    So, there's one system where water hammer *could* be a problem. But those valves are only shut during an earthquake anyhow, not routinely. (They've only been shut once like that, during the Northridge quake -- I was happy to hear that the pipeline was shut down perfectly).

    Wayne Conrad
  • Gives a new meaning to:
    "I had a shit time on New Years Eve"
  • When IE is installed, it upgrades roughly half the DLLs in NT's system directory...

    I think we'd be better off assuming IE is a part of the operating system, and that installing IE or one of its service packs equals "upgrading" NT.

    Of course, this would not happen on a real OS... ;)

  • The trouble with the Y2K problem is that you can't be entirely sure without checking. It sounds almost inconceivable that anyone could make a blunder this way.

    However, I refer you to the respected 'Risks' archive: volume 20 issue 46. [infowar.com] 'Y2K test sends sewage flowing in Los Angeles'.

    We all know there is a lot of hype out there, and probably only one in a hundred Y2K stories are true. However, that's an awful lot of genuine problems amongst the chaff.

  • This is the biggest crockpot story I have ever heard. I worked at a water treatment plant for 6 years, and the plant could care less if it was december 1923 or August 2040, everything is done manually or can be done manually. The plants are staffed 24 hours a day, and everything is monitored closely! every hour measurements are taken on every system and chemical dose, and water quality. unless the operator DIES or is 100% incompetent, there cannot be any problems with the plant. Heck, I've seen new guys completely screw up the system and NOT dose the raw water stream with Alum for 12 hours and we were able to get things back in line quickly. and we NEVER exceeded state regulations...

    Whatever mag that published this should stick to what they know instead of making things up just to scare people or sell more issues. dont worry about your water... it's the safest thing you have. (P.S. you greenpeace nuts... Chlorine is the best thing we could use to make water safe.. if you dont believe me, then go drink out of the streams directly for a week.)
  • NONE- by state and federal law all water plants must have their own power generating systems to back up the never-reliable power grid.

    I've ran my plant for 1 month on the generators.
    (Back in a evil snowstorm in 1996)
  • The article says the latest data they have is from June... But the rest of your points are very valid.. I mean, so the plant operators get a bunch of overtime. At least I won't be the only one working thru NewYears.
  • A freind of mine works at a sewage plant int he greater Los Angeles. He says that they had a Y2K test a few months ago that caused the gate to misbehave resulting in excess dumping of sewage into the lake/river than they were allowed to that month by a factor of two or three.
    This is the kind of Y2K hicup whose effects will only be seen 6 months to a few years down the line as massive sewage dumps seriously fuck up aquatic popultations.
    Of course if you ask me LA is realy a good place to do that sort of experiment....
  • I think anyone who goes swimming off the coast of Britain in January has bigger problems to worry about than sewage...


    >>The system operates via a cut-off date/time combo, after which it will stop pouring sewage into the sea. Unfortunately, last I heard, the system date will "overflow" to 1900 (or something similar) and will thus never reach the stop time. A word of advice: don't go swimming in the sea anywhere in Britain (or anywhere) very soon after the Millennium, let them clarify the situation first.
    Surfers beware! :-)
  • I used to be confident that most Y2K scenarios were far-fetched little stories created to scare viewers and nab ratings during sweeps.

    Now I'm not so sure...

    The City of Milwaukee, without telling anyone before hand, installed 12 huge emergency generators in strategic locations around the metro area. Their purpose? To provide emergency power to the sewage overflow pumps, thereby reducing the chance that sewage will back up into your basement if we suffer a prolonged outage. They'll pump the sewage into local streams and rivers... streams and rivers that will be frozen by the 1st.

    This came just days after their "We're OK for Y2K" press conference.
  • Actually, it's Torontonians.. as I said originally.. That's how they refer to people who live in Toronto on radio/tv/newspaper
  • My brother-in-law runs a municipal water supply, so I can answer some of your issues based on ym conversations with him and his work schedule.

    First off, SOMEONE will be available at midnight new years if something goes wrong -- water is too valuable a resource, and the technicians, as well as other staff, have a regular rotating call schedule (24/7) like any hospital.

    Flexible hours are what attract some people to the job, so being on a saturday doesn't mean they have two days off (someone is running the station on a saturday and sunday, too!).

    Second, everything has a mechanical override -- again, water is too valuable to trust entirely to automated systems. There are plenty of people who know how to run the override systems.

    granted, this is all for a municipality of a few hundred thousand (maybe a million, but less than two) so large cities like NYC will have much more automation dependency...

  • Yeeesh (Score:4)

    by elthia ( 119370 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @03:15PM (#1468736)
    Ok, first off, setting water and food aside is a good idea no matter where or when you are living. I come from a weird family (ok, flat-out dysfunctional, they're all freaks). But the one thing my mother has tons of is common sense. She has always had a deep freezer, and a back room full of cans. We ate this food - you don't want to keep cans for more than a year or so, so we cycled through them. But they always kept that room etc. full. We had enough food back there to keep us for a good three or four months, just in case. We also had a week's worth of water, which she changed frequently so as to keep it fresh. We lived in a rural area.

    What did this mean, practically? A lot of work for mom - but when hurricane Diana hit and laid waste to our neighbors' places (we were on a hill, and what neighbors were around in that rural area lived in houses like ours, 200 years old), we were ok. We didn't need the ability to get to the garden or the store, we had enough water, etc. When we had a massive blizzard and were stuck in the house for a week and a half, the only problems we had involved keeping four hyper, annoying, ADD-affected monsters from destroying everything.

    Keeping stores is always a good idea (but it does take work and space, and I'm lazy and live in an apartment so I'm not ready for _anything_ right now).

    Also, this thing about the sewage and water treatment systems: I have been under the impression that the number of backup systems is downright funny for that sort of thing. Human labor did it at first, without computers, and they never removed the ability for human labor to do it still. So maybe our water bills will be a bit higher (ok, the water bills of those of you who own houses :P ).

    There's going to be a run on bottled water and canned food anyway, due to the mass hysteria that this date-change has caused in the US. I think I'm more afraid of the crowds in the stores than I am of this sort of thing.

    Besides, the 'end of the world' is going to happen via diseases anyway. Now that I have nightmares about - Plague Patrols going on witchhunts, killing anyone who has even bad acne in an effort to keep diseases under control, buildings falling down due to lack of maintenance, people fighting over food because they don't know how to hunt - or don't want to eat diseased rats and pigeons... *shudder* (but that's not based on date anyway, it's based on how-long-humans-keep-fighting).

    Bleh.
    -Elthia
  • Well not that is some back up plan U have there. I see U have given the matter more thought than I myself would, however it is insightful and informative. I think given the situation U have described your plan would be the most hygenic in any case. Interesting overall.
  • this is not a failure of the system but the morons that automated it.

    any idiot that sets gates and valves to operate based on a date should be shot and then publically impaled in front of the plant for all to see...

    But then my plant that I worked at used wonder... I mean Blunderware... a software package that makes windows NT look like a lean pievce of code..

    very few plants are affected... if in doubt check out www.awwa.com [awwa.com]
  • exactly, most plants have 50 year old systems that dont even have logic chips or electronics.
    every plant I seen controlled the systems via pnumatic air systems and 440 volt motors.

    dont give us your tirade about new and nice systems.... in your dreams...

    Water plants use really old crap... why? because that 60 year old pump still works! but then I worked in a water plant that was the 3rd one in the country.. and the second plant to ever add flouride to the water stream....

    (OMG we're poisioning our children.... boo hoo)
    Please... all you "health nuts" stop drinking treated water and drink directly from the lakes... we really need to thin out the gene pool a bit more.
    Chlorine and flouride has saved more lives and protected us from more illnesses than any medical discovery known to man.

  • the house is located near the head waters that feed the well. (and no, the septic tank doesnt have a chance in hell of getting into the mix). i get it tested about once a month and bacteria/chemical filter it.

    of course there is a chance that it will somehow be contaminated (sp?) but then if you realized how far out we from that which is known as civilization...

    cheers

  • I was gonna say the same thing to you, but then I went down stairs and fell asleep. It is pretty cool though.
  • Yeah, right. Try to find a compliant company for anything you buy. Get them to put it in writing. (They won't, of course).
    It is difficult to find out who is and is not compliant. Companies release meaningless, optimistic, reports that have been edited by the legal department to be content free.

    "We fully expect... we are very confident... we have spent a lot of money and time preparing... blah blah blah."

    But never "We completed repairs on all our hardware and software on June 10, 1999, and have been running extensive system testing since then. No significant problems have been found in the repaired systems."

    If I saw a few reports like that, I'd be much more confident about the Y2K outcome.

    Torrey (Azog) Hoffman
  • I agree, awareness is something the internet and Y2K has sent to unprecedented proportions. Which I think some of "them" are not entirely happy with.
  • Actually, most small towns use septic tanks and well water, neither of which relies on computers.
  • Also, this thing about the sewage and water treatment systems: I have been under the impression that the number of backup systems is downright funny for that sort of thing. Human labor did it at first, without computers, and they never removed the ability for human labor to do it still.

    Yeah, I have this image of a bunch of treatment people running around the plant yelling "Oh my God! The computer thinks it's 1900! How will we EVER figure out how to treat this water on our own! All of our pipes are gonna stop working!"

    Of course, the reason I'm not so worried about this is because I know the guy who runs the plant in my town personally (he lives a block away from me) and his folks know what they're doing. They kept our water clean and and all that both during Hurrican Fran (a bit over a week with no power) and Hurricane Floyd (a little less than a week with no power) and I figure no matter what happens (not that I expect anything to happen) they can keep things under control again.

  • Well, I guess Mr. Hanky is comin' on New Years this year!

    Howdy Ho boys 'n girls!


    ==============================
    Windows NT has crashed,
    I am the Blue Screen of Death,
  • Well in Oz we might be swiming in beurocratic shit by you yanks are going to be swimming in the real stuff huh? :)

  • Industrial systems such as water/sewer systems have two layers:

    Accouting, which is the technology that you see when you visit a plant because it is visible -- monitor screens displaying really nifty info on the status of the plant etc.

    Control is the layer that actually does all the work. Now these aren't so apparent because usually embedded chips do this sort of work. Totally hardware or at least firmware that has been a fundamental part of the working of the plant since it was built.

    That possibly means in the '70s or '80s. Hard to upgrade because of the nature, and to make things worse, most of the people who can fix them are probably not in the business anymore.

    Check out http://www.2k-times.com/y2k-a152.htm for more info on embedded chips in general.

  • As long as I have power I'll be fine. After all, who needs water to run a computer? I do just fine with soda. Of course soda is majorly part water (and sugar woo woo!) so that's something to think about. About sewers, I got a thingie in my yard so that only gets pumped out every 2 years or so. If I don't have power I can't flush, and then my bathrooms get a TAD stinky. As long as I got power, I can tell you all how fresh my toilet smells.

    -PovRayMan
  • How dare you defame pigs. Torontonians are not fit to fuck pigs! Natalie Portman...maybe.
  • He says that they had a Y2K test a few months ago that caused the gate to misbehave

    See my other comment on something that sounded like this story (except that, if I remember correctly, the sewage was dumped into a park, not into a lake or river); was it a Y2K problem that caused the gate to misbehave, or was it some other problem that showed up because, as part of their testing, they shut power off? (Which means that the problem, as per my other comment, is arguably worse than a Y2K problem, as power can go away for other reasons....)

  • I really found it frightening that the guy who was defending the plants said that most of them were fully prepared or well on their way. Since this is about 20 days till the date, well on their way isn't very assuring. Oh sure, the watchdog group is wigging out about a report in June, but this guy, I presume, said this rather recently.
  • Actually it only smells like shit when the wind is blowing accross the channel from France!
  • Yeah, i guess. I have mine pumped every 5 years though, and in 5 years if were not all dead they should have the pumper trucks working. And i have well water, that comes from far away from the tanks!
  • So, of the water/sewer systems with which you are so intimately familiar, how many are reliant on computers?

    Sorry, but I couldn't help making fun of this comment. Maybe if you somehow established your authority in this field, I could lend you a bit of credibility. :)

  • From what I remember reading in the Water Utilities press during the summer the majority of the water utilities were either compliant or would be by the end of October this year.
    Anyway the biggest concern is the phone network as they don't have control over it. Many of the newer sewage plants using Active Sludge and the like as well as the incinerators need to be in contact with central services in case of major failures in the system, to get technical assistance.
    I worked around one of the biggest Sewage Treatment works in Europe and I think there is enough manual control to stop backflow. We had more problems during the floods in August killing pump houses. Ah well like many people my Dad is on call for the incinerator over the date change, just to be safe.

  • Re:Free market won't decide (Score:3)

    by Tom Christiansen ( 54829 ) <tchrist@perl.com> on Saturday December 11, 1999 @03:34PM (#1468764) Homepage
    Why is the government involved in regulating water, anyways?
    That depends on whether you mean inspecting or providing. If you mean providing, then it's probably related to economies of scale and guaranteeing uniform and universal access to essential services. Could the private sector handle this? Oh, probably.

    However, if you mean regulation in the sense of establishing standards and inspecting for compliance, which is to mean what "regulation" means, then that's simple to answer. It's for the same reason as why the government in clean foods, effective drugs, state-licensed physicians or electricians, and aircraft inspections. It's a matter of public safety. Safe food, safe drugs, safe wiring, safe surgery, safe airplanes. And so on and so forth.

    And no, you really can't trust the industries to be responsible. Most will, but sometimes mistakes are made, corners are cut, or people are just too greedy. History has shown that you just can't trust all the people all the time. The cost in terms of human life is deemed too high to just let it all slide. And yes, it happens plenty anyway. But without public health and safety regulations, it would be incredibly worse.

    And you don't really want the private sector responsible for creating and enforcing the public safety laws. That would be even worse that having the government do it. Much worse, I fear.

    [When I read the headline, I was trying to figure out how water lilies could fail at Y2K compliance. Seriously. "Water plants" just invoked the wrong image for me. :-]

  • Great, I'm moving up there tommorrow! ;-)

    Sorry, it's been a slow day on Slashdot today. I read this story from a couple different sources in the past couple days so I was actually suprised to see the Slashdot headline - I thought it was old news already. ;)

  • Hrm. I find it disturbing that of all things, my WATER - unquestionably the most pure, untainted substance on Earth - won't be Y2K compliant *g*

    Mental note: don't drink anything green from my faucet :-)

  • Yeah, it's called http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=
  • Yes, but most of the control systems--sytems that measure contaminant levels, set chlorination rates, etc.-- in your average plant are fairly accessible and are not buried 20 feet underground. There is nothing difficult about upgrading these systems, and there are plenty of companies that do it.

    Now the embedded chips used in the petroleum industry, that's another story . ..
  • Interestingly, water purification is one of the most process-controlled things in this country. Did you know that there are more metrics preformed on the average gallon of drinking water than on most parts in a Boeing 747?

    Strange but true.

    I'm not too worried around my area, but that's just cause I know some people who run large hospitals's Plant enginnering departments and they've gone over the water people round here with a fine toothed sledgehammer.

    It's not as simple as it sounds, though. Large volumes of purified drinking water is one of the more amazing accomplishments of civilization.
  • Nightfall is a great comparison I hadn't thought of. Just hope it's not prophetic. I'll recommend reading that to any Y2K paranoid friends -- it illustrates the true danger from Y2K nicely.

  • oh man (Score:2)

    by niola ( 74324 )
    "Merry Christmas! Shitter was full"
    --Cousin Eddie
  • Of course, it's because I'm out in the sticks with a spring whose head is 35 feet above the first floor of the house.

    That, through 300 feet of 1 1/4" pipe provides a little less than 20 psi of water pressure provided by gravity. There are no computers controlling any water flow into the house.

    As a convenience for the household water-drawing electical appliances, there is a water pump, a shallow-well type, mounted on a Well-X-Trol brand pressure tank of 30 gallons capacity with a rubber bladder in it to boost the pressure to between 45-60 psi.

    In case of a power loss, the appliances aren't going to work anyway, but plenty of drinking water will be around.

    Oh, yeah, and "graywater" goes into a septic tank in the back yard. No computers in there either. I just don't want to overflow it when the ground is saturated from snow meltoff.

    So, see, there are advantages to living in a rural area. My biggest worry every winter is with a weather-induced power faliure lasting several days. With an electric water heater, there may be no hot water available out of there. Wood stoves still provide a way to heat water for basic hygeine and some cooking.
    --

  • Hey! (Score:1)

    by Kaht ( 122157 )
    Hey: didn't any of you take the pledge to stop talking about Y2K? I could go on for days listing things that could potentially be affected by Y2K, this article's a waste of space really...
  • The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

    Hey, Bungalow Bill
    What did you kill
    Bungalow Bill?
    He went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun.
    In case of accidents he always took his mom.
    He's the all American bullet-headed saxon mother's son.
    All the children sing
    Hey, Bungalow Bill
    What did you kill
    Bungalow Bill?
    Deep in the jungle where the mighty tiger lies
    Bill and his elephants were taken by surprise.
    So Captain Marvel zapped in right between the eyes.
    All the children sing
    Hey, Bungalow Bill
    What did you kill
    Bungalow Bill?
    The children asked him if to kill was not a sin.
    Not when he looked so fierce, his mother butted in.
    If looks could kill it would have been us
    Instead of him.
    All the children sing
    Hey, Bungalow Bill
    What did you kill
    Bungalow Bill?
  • We have a privatized water supply here. IT SUCKS. The cost is horrendous. The mismanagement is beyond belief. The company is always running into problems with the EPA for trying to cut corners. Everybody has switched to bottled water because they are afraid their will be something like the cryptosporidium outbreak that occurred in Milwaukee.

    We can't get a decent company to compete or takeover because the current company has let things get run down in search of profits and it would require a major investment to bring things up to snuff. The state has threatened several times to take over by eminent domain. Everyone who lives here hopes it will be SOON. Before people are killed by a bug or other contamination.

    Anyone who thinks privatization is the solution to all problems has a case of severe anal-cranial inversion.

  • I was thinking more along the lines of small towns not being aware of the problems/not having the money to deal with them. I guess there's not really any reason to think that, though. Smart people live in small towns, too. :^)


    Invicta{HOG}

  • I've got some y2k compliant soil and water if you wish to buy it >:)

  • I've long felt that the modern sewage system is one of humankind's greatest achievements. Just looking back at the pre-sewage European cities during a plague or cholera outbreak reminds you just how many disgusting things live in our waste. While I'm sure that many major cities (at least in the US) won't be totally affected, I could see where this would be a problem in small towns (like my own) and in foreign countries. It's funny when you stop and think about just how much computers affect our lives. Sewer systems!


    Invicta{HOG}

  • Strange to see a link to a fear-mongering article on Slashdot so soon after the anti-fear-mongering Y2K pledge.

  • In other news... (Score:3)

    by oblom ( 105 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @02:20PM (#1468786) Homepage

    Since the report did not predict which water suppliers may be disrupted by Y2K, the center recommended households store 10 gallons of water per person for the date change, or enough to last 10 days.

    Later that day a few other recommendations were added:

    1. Build a bunker in your backyard. If you happen to live in the large building start construction in the nearest park.

    2. Purchase sufficient supplies of meat and milk to last at least a month. Cows will start dying of depression when they find themselves in 1900. I mean, who would want to give milk when it's not going to be pasteurized?

    3. And of course, buy enough candles. You will need them to read your favorite "Linux System Administration" and "Programming Perl", while your laptop lays dead after power outage.
  • . . the electricity, phone, internet conection doesn't work and you're pinned down behind a Gap display in the mall watching all of the looters clean out the hooded fleece stock.

    :)

  • no pun intended. wait, yes there is, nevermind.
  • ...exactly, tons of it. i hope my areas ready i dont want to have to get in ye-ol'-boat...

  • Re:Fearmongering bastards. (Score:3)

    by itp ( 6424 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @02:23PM (#1468790)
    I'm not suggesting that we're necessarily going to see a lot of damage from Y2K issues in water and sewer systems, but I think you'd be surprised how many systems are dependent on computer systems.

    I was recently doing research on Information War (IW) for a report. The DoD has recently (last few years) done a lot of research into US IW vulnerability. The results indicate that 1) the US has a lot of targets that depend on computers, and 2) we lack the appropriate infrastructure to effectively communicate when our computer systems aren't functioning.

    Don't write this kind of thing off, and don't ignore it. We've been living in a kind of information paradise for the last few years, building elaborate computer systems without appropriate fallbacks and safeguards. We should treat Y2K as wakeup call number one.

  • Re:Free market will decide (Score:4)

    by Pascal Q. Porcupine ( 4467 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @03:56PM (#1468791) Homepage
    Pipelines.

    Do you really want to have your supplier either have to hook up a single water main to your house (at great expense) or have each of the regional suppliers have a bunch of mains through your neighborhood? Having just one main from a city-regulated water supplier leads to enough troubles as it is. Where are all those extra mains going to go?

    There are certain things which, by their very nature, mandate a monopoly. This is why the government regulates it - better that it be paid for by taxes and be setup in the common interest than to be regulated by cost-cutting cutthroat competition.

    Here in Albuquerque, the water/sewage treatment plants are self-sufficient. They use the fermented gasses from the sewage to power their own generators to get their own electricity. They also sell some of that electricity to the power company for some income. Oh, and they are mostly computer-automated; they have very few workers actually doing anything. It's practically autonomous and automatic. They're unsure as to whether all their systems are Y2K-compliant. If it isn't, then there'll be a few days of badly mistreated water. My mom, a microbiologist and science writer, has been taking samples from the incoming and outgoing streams (and she's fallen in love with the word "throughput," which is used in more situations than just webservers) for a grant with the city. She's looking forward to the interesting results from 1/1/2000.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • But consider... (Score:3)

    by Christopher B. Brown ( 1267 ) <cbbrowne@gmail.com> on Saturday December 11, 1999 @04:19PM (#1468794) Homepage
    • If you have a hot water heater in your home or apartment, then you have a repository with several gallons of water. It's more important to have drinking water than hot showers...
    • Critical systems have always been paranoid about not forcing in anything like "fly by wire." It has only just recently entered in on some of the very fanciest of military aircraft.
    • By the way, since the US government has been issuing extra currency due to peoples' paranoia, this increases the basic money supply, M0, which may result in there being some extra inflation between now and February 2000. Enjoy.
    • Haven't people already pledged to hold the Y2K Paranoia Pledge that was discussed a day or two ago?

  • Wastewater (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It may interest you to know that, in the Detroit area at least, there is a shop which makes controls where I used to work. Its business is about evenly split between automotive applications and wastewater treatment devices. What does this mean? Well, it means for one that new wastewater controls are purchased on a regular basis. We're not talking some 50-year old crap here - they sell millions of dollars worth of brand new wastewater controls every year. Good news - most water treatment places at least in Michigan won't have ancient control equipment, but stuff built locally by skilled people within the last several years. Bad news - each and every one of these setups is computerized. I don't believe that the computers this shop uses care about the date, but I wasn't a programmer - I just put the things together - so I really wouldn't know.

  • Re:Fearmongering bastards. (Score:5)

    by wconrad ( 51386 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @04:24PM (#1468796)
    My job for over 10 years was computerizing fresh and waste-water treatment plants. Based upon my experience, I'm not terribly worried. I am certain there will be problems, but I think they will be little noticed by the public.

    A computer-controlled water plant generally has 3 tiers: (1) the master control computer, (2) remote controllers, (3) manual controls. The master control computer communicates with the remote controllers, which do the actual work of monitoring and controlling the plant. The signals from the remote controllers are routed through manual controls (switches) to the various pumps and valves.

    The master control computer (could be computers, in the case of a redundant system) is usually some kind of microcomputer. We put a fair number of Gateways, Dells, and other name-brand PC's in plants.

    The remote controllers are usually some form of embedded system. The most common remote controllers are purpose-built for the task and are called PLC's (Programmable Logic Controllers).

    The manual controls usually (I'll get to the exceptions) exist as regular old mechanical switches in the electrical path between the remote controllers and the pumps and valves. A typical manual control is a switch with three positions: "auto" leaves the remote controller in command, "man" forces the device to be on/open, no matter what the controller says, and "off" forces the device to be off/closed, no matter what the controller says.

    Also, the remote control computers are usually programmed to operate independently of the master control station. Whenever the master control station goes down (a fairly routine occurance in most plants), the remote controllers keep the plant running based upon their pre-programmed control algorithms and upon the last instructions ("Keep the tank level between 12 and 15 feet") that they received from the master control station.

    Every water plant I computerized in my career had this 3-tier architecture: master, remote, manual-overrides.

    Because the remote controllers can carry on for some time (hours, at least), in the absense of the master computer, failure of the master -- say, to reboot it after a Y2K-induced freeze -- is not a big deal. And because of the manual-overrides, the plant can be run manually even if the remote controllers fail or start issuing goofy commands.

    The real risk for a computerized plant experiencing y2k problems is not that you won't receive fresh water or have your sewage treated -- it's that the city will be paying large amounts of overtime for the extra staffing it takes to run the plant manually. If a city is dumb enough to not have the staff on call during that critical period, then it IS possible for y2k problems to become visible to the public in some way more dramatic than an increased personnel budget. Also, I worked on a few plants where the engineers were so insanely stupid that they allowed the manual overrides to be built into the remote controllers, not independent of them. I always lobbied hard to have such insanities corrected and was usually successful. Those plants without independent manual overrides are the ones in true danger. But I gotta tell you, the plant designed by such intellectual giants are in serious trouble *without* y2k.

    All in all, I'm not worried -- I expect to get water and flush the toilet on the 1st without causing the collapse of civilization.

    Wayne Conrad
  • "backed up sewers, and undertreated water."

    And this is different from the status quo? =)


    Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".

  • New water additive: Diesel (Score:3)

    by jfunk ( 33224 ) <jfunk@roadrunner.nf.net> on Saturday December 11, 1999 @04:36PM (#1468800) Homepage
    I had heard that a town in Ontario did a Y2K check on their water system and it leaked diesel into the water supply.

    The joke was that it improved the water.

    I have a feeling that *some* small towns are going to have a lot of trouble if they haven't checked by now (morons, what the fsck do they get paid for?).

    Meanwhile, I'm in a larger city and I have quite a stockpile of well water and those bubbly drinks containing caffeine (It was on sale). Has nothing to do with y2k, though, our water supply simply has way too much chlorine in it and those Brita things are a PITA. If you run the water, you'll be able to smell the Cl from across the room and it tastes like pool water.
  • I have a feeling that *some* small towns are going to have a lot of trouble if they haven't checked by now.

    Actually, small towns should be fine. Why? Became small towns don't have public water and sewer. Each house has its own, private water and waste facilities. As long as you have power (and a small generator will ensure that), you are all set.

    It is the medium-sized towns -- the small cities -- that might have trouble. Big enough to need centralized systems, small enough to not be able to afford proper upkeep.

  • This is silly . . . (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Poodle ( 15365 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @04:39PM (#1468802)
    I'm not sure where to begin, so I'll just dive in . . .

    First of all, the NRDC tends to, when making announcements, to err on the side of extreme alarmism. They mean well, but often make sensationalistic (sp) statements because, well, that's what it takes to get media attention.

    Note that "The report said fewer than half of the drinking water utilities had completed all phases of Y2K preparations, including contingency planning and testing, as of June 1999, the date of the last industry survey." Is is possible that in the meantime many of the utilities have made significant progress towards this?

    While many of the control systems in water treatement plands do require the use of embedded logic/controller chips (the exact name escapes me) they are NOT buried 30 feet underground. They are also not 20 to 30 years old. The treatment industry statndards are set by the feds (EPA) and get tougher every few years. To meet the tougher regs, plants switch to more advanced processes, which means new equipment. The last treatment plant I visited (Fairfield, CA) used a bank of pc's to control the processes at the entire plant. None of the treatment gear (with the exception of the sedimentation tanks) looked older than 10 years.

    The water/wastewater industry is one of the most efficient and vigilant industries that I know of. The American Water Works Association as a professional oganization is honest to a fault. If they dispute the report, they must have a good reason.

    Realistically, he most likely problem that MIGHT occur would be some sort of power failure (PGE&E in our parts is not guranteeing power) which would more than likely cause water supply pumps to stop pumping. This can create a loss of pressure and siphoning in the water lines, which can easily lead to contamination if your idiot neighbor decides to fill his dirty swimming pool on New Years Eve.

    Does it make sense to have some water on hand just in case? Of course. Am I worried? No.

    By the way, Some utilities are more than happy to give tours if you contact them in advance. Most people have no idea how involved the process actually is, and would benefit from a tour.

    Most of my comments have been made in reference to water treatment, but can bea applied equally to wastewater treatment.

  • Re:The technology behind these systems (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually prior to the mid 80's, most process control computers used in water and wastewater facilities were mainframe computers designed for process controls. Due to the cost updating the control system at a single plant, many are still "in use." That is there are some screens with misc. process variables updating, but not much else. Beginning in the early 80's, distributed control systems starting entering the water/wastewater industry. These controllers are in fact designed as you described. That is a control computer which does the actual control, and a display computer which displays all the pretty graphics. The three things most people fail to remember about either of these control systems are: 1. Process controls DO NOT use dates for control functions. Process controls are concerned with the process variable (current liquid level, flow, temperature, etc.)and desired set point. Control is performed based on the difference between the two. If a flow is too low, speed up the controlling pump; if the flow is too fast, slow the pump speed. 2. Many process control computers do not have day/date functionality. It just isn't needed for controls. In fact, early programmable logic controllers (PLC) did not have the ability to use numerical(analog)values. The PLCs could only use on/off (digital) states. Please understand, in process controls analog and digital mean different things then in the real world. Analog is any numerical representation; digital just refers to an input signal being off or on. 3. Most importantly, the vast majority of computer control systems installed in water/wasterwater plants were installed seperately from the plant's other equipment. This occurs due to the way cities are forced to bid their work. The contractor suppling and installing the computer control system is different from the contractor installing the pumps and motors. As a result, all equipment in the plant _must_ work in manual mode; it is quite possible the computers won't be installed until months or years after the rest of the plant is up and running. If by any chance a computer fails for _any_ reason, Y2K or not, the operator just has to flick a switch, and they are in total control. Frankly, all this crap surrounding control systems and embedded computers was clearly started by people with experience only in the main frame world with just enough experience to be dangerous. BTW, if you can't tell, I have 10 years experience designing, programming, and troubleshooting process control computers.
  • Actually, if working properly, they don't get full. They aren't a real tank, they have openings, they just contain the crap until it is broken down into less crappy crap by bacteria and stuff.
  • "Luckily" the sewage will probably be warm enough to open holes in the ice and settle right along the bottom.
  • I'm sick of seeing this crap that has no point but to cause panic. Just the other day an article was posted "Take the Y2k Pledge" [slashdot.org], a very good article IMHO. Slashdot should not encourage the fearmongering that the mainstream media has taken to, not because of facts, but people want to hear it for some reason. The only real problems that occur will be caused by people over-reacting, not computer failure.

    So... please /. contributors, don't fall into this trap. I'm very willing to put money on civilization surviving the turn to 2000. If it doesn't, I guess it's just paper.

    The biggest Y2K problem is that I'll be on call on Dec 31-Jan 1st, just as I suspect many of you readers will be and I'm supposed to stay sober as well as in cell range.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My God, its full of stars

  • Lots of this stuff works by gravity, which should continue to operate fine even in the new millenium :-) But how much do typical municipal water systems depend on electricity, and how many of them have adequate backup power? I'm not too worried about the control systems (as you say, most of it has manual overrides, and I can boil water on a gas stove if I need to), and you can power computers with little diesel generators if you're prepared, but what about Big Motors? Does that stuff run on electricity, or mostly diesel?


    Losing the water system is really much more annoying and hard to prepare for than losing power, in spite of how many systems need power.
    It's easy to store enough drinking and cooking water for a week or two, and you can skip showers if you want, and a gasoline-powered camping stove can last a long time. Keeping enough water for toilets is more annoying, and some of us apartment-dwellers don't have shovels around to dig latrines with.

  • As of JUNE. Give me a break. (Score:5)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @02:23PM (#1468809)
    There are several aspects to this story that make it highly dubious. The first is that the last report was conducted in June. Few industries, ANYWHERE had completed their Y2K preparations as of June. The second is that even if the Y2K preparations are not complete there is no great likelihood of serious failure. Few industrial control systems are particularly date sensitive. Only the supervisory/accounting systems are. Finally these systems always include multiple levels of redundancy right down to manual override in case of primary control element failure.

    This is going to be just another Y2K Chicken Little story drummed up by panic mongers.

  • Please be reasonable. Yes, much of the Y2K flap is fear mongering, but some of it is legitimate concern. No, I don't think it will be the end of the world. But the US, especially, is very dependend on computer systems, more than we sometimes realize. Y2K is just one way in which we are becoming increasingly aware of this.
  • I've worked on embedded systems where every operator command, equipment status change and alarm had to be logged to a disk file and printed on a line printer. Each entry included the date and time of the event. All voice communication circuits were recorded on a tape recorder with a time code track.

    This was done so that the causes of major failures could be determined and the appropriate people could be shot (just kidding).

  • The government has (reportedly) been increasing the supply of currency, but that is not the same thing as increasing the supply of money. The difference is subtle, but important. You can print all the currency you want, but when people withdraw that currency from the bank their bank balances decrease accordingly, so no actual change in the money supply is realized. (Note that currency lying in a vault is not "money" in any meaningful sense, since it cannot be spent without first withdrawing it, in which case see above.) In order to increase the money supply, you need to do more than just print and/or mint more currency; you actually need to loosen monetary policy, for instance by having the central banks lower interest rates or buy securities.


    None of this is to say that there might not be inflation between now and February, and it might conceivably be related to Y2K (although a suitable mechanism eludes me), but if that happens, the cause will not have been merely issuing extra currency.


    -r

  • Don't be too quick to rely on well water. Just a few months ago, there was a large sewer main break in a town near here that contaminated all the wells. The whole town, homes and businesses, had to rely on trucked-in water for weeks.

    It occurs to me that most USAmericans have a large 30 to 50 gallon water tank in their homes - their water heater. (I think tankless heaters are the norm in other parts of the world.) Would it be sufficient to just flush it out real good in the next week or two, then close the inlet valve around 11:59 on Dec 31 and not open it until you're heard "all clear"? I'd think that would at least give water clean enough to run through my camping filter before drinking.

    Ironic that I saw this today, though - I just bought a 30 gallon water storage bag (sort of like a big "solar shower") this afternoon. Doubt I'll actually need it on Jan 1, but there's a good chance it'll come in handy someday. (Heck, even if I never need it for a disaster it'd be perfect for a camping trip in the desert.)

  • Geez, and here I was thinking it was safe to read slashdot! PLEASE! NO MORE Y2K STORIES!!!!!!

    CSG_SurferDude

  • Re:In other news... (Score:3)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Saturday December 11, 1999 @02:29PM (#1468825)
    There's actually nothing wrong with suggesting to store 10 gal/person of fresh water. The best advice regarding preparing for Y2K is to be ready for a natural disaster. This means: have a flashlight, a battery-powered radio, candles, food that need not be cooked or can be cooked easily, and extra water. No hoarding or anything, but just common sense.

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