I've heard a rumour, that in Australia there was an experiment with testing the water supply systems and their Y2K compatibility. According to the rumour, when the dates turned over, all of the chemicals that are used to treat the water supply were dumped into the water. The computers thought that a 100 years had gone by, where it had not treated the water, and tried to make up for it in one single shot. I was wondering if any of you had heard about this (confirm the rumour) and also, do you think there is a possibility of that happening in North America? Just a scary thought...

-- Anonymous, February 19, 1999

Answers

I remember reading about this event some time ago. But it was only a test, and the chemicals "would" have been dumped as described had it been real. It did not actually happen.

-- Anonymous, February 19, 1999

Yes, it was a test several months ago. I read the news report at that time. Marcella

-- Anonymous, February 19, 1999

This story has a bit of hair on it (from early 1998). There was some investigation that was done to verify or debunk the story - here's the results:

(ref: DejaNews article)

ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) wrote:

>>Yesterday's newspaper's at home, but there was an article in
>>the Sydney Morning Herald here in Australia 
>>about a town water utility that did a Y2K test and found 
>>that their entire store of purifying chemicals would have 
>>been immediately dumped into the supply, probably causing 
>>mass poisoning and fatalities.

>I just spoke with Bill Davison who is in charge of Public Works for
>the town of Couffs Harbour, Australia.
>He stated that this was a hypothetical example done by the folks in
>Sydney.   Couffs Harbour have not actually done the test yet, 
>although
>they will be testing their systems sometime in the near future.
>So the reporters who covered the story missed the "hypothetical" part
>and/or didn't make it clear in their story.

-- Anonymous, February 20, 1999