I just called up my local water company, which supplies an entire 2 million populated area with water to find out what they were doing with y2k. I was told by top personnel that the billing was being taken care of, but the plants themselves were so ancient that everything was done manually inside them and thus there was no need for y2k modifications. There were no embedded chips to worry about, no computer processes at all in the plant, the guy insisted. . " Nothing on purification? filtration? No buttons being pressed at all?', I asked Coaxed he said that there might be a few buttons that are pressed but no chips need to be fixed. He said the real threat to them was no power. My question is, Is this possible? 2 million people are getting water from a system with no y2k problems? What are the specific systems I should be asking him about? Many thanks Matt

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1998

Answers

Matt, I suppose anything is possible, but I can see why you are a little wary. It may be that you were talking to a person at the water pumping station, and not the purification plant. When I talked with the man at our (small population) county water company and he told me the same thing - old equipment, only billing computers - I discovered that he was only talking about the pumping. The water purification/sewage treatment plant was a separate thing. Even our little community uses a SCADA board in the sewage treatment plant, so it's hard to believe that a 2 million sized system would not.

Perhaps you ran into the same situation I did, and need to ask for the person in charge of the purification and sewage treatment. I understand from talking with others that these can be in separate locations from the pumping stations. That's the only thing I can think of, other than calling your local councilman/alderman/whatever and asking for specifics about the organizational structure of your locale's water delivery systems and who is in charge of each aspect. Good luck!

-- Anonymous, November 17, 1998