The Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem has issued its 100 Day Report. I found the following passages to be among the most pertinent:

"Overall progress in the electric utilities industry has been most impressive, moving from 36% of testing complete as of the Committee's last report to 99% complete at the time of this report. However, only about 60% of the companies are using independent review to validate and confirm their results. In addition, fewer than 60% have developed contingency plans, and fewer than 25% have actually tested or exercised these plans. Equally troubling is the fact that only about 24% of the companies are publicly disclosing their reports to NERC. Finally, and most alarming, is the fact that 270 of the 2,012 public power utilities, including some serving large metropolitan areas, did not participate in APPA's June survey and were, as a result, not included in NERC's August 1999 report. . .

In general, nuclear facilities contain very old analog technology and, accordingly, have fewer Y2K issues than the more digital and modern fossil fuel facilities. Nevertheless, assessments to date have revealed varying degrees of problems in areas such as plant process control, feed water monitoring, refueling, turbine control, and building security and access control. These problems should not affect plant safety but they could cause electricity production problems. . .

Overall failure of the electric power grids and prolonged blackouts are highly unlikely. . . Not withstanding this reassuring fact, the Committee continues to believe that local outages are a distinct possibility. Many electric utilities will not complete their remediation activities until later in the year. This reduces their opportunity to participate in industry readiness exercises and limits their time to address unexpected failures. . .

Individual utilities must do a better job of telling the public about their overall level of readiness. According to DOE, 75% of the utilities do not routinely share detailed readiness information with the public. . .

There are no comprehensive studies concerning the number of entities that would have to fail to put the grid at risk, but some experts suggest that it may be a very small percentage if these failures occur in key locations. . ."

And, for Marcella:

"The electric and oil and gas sectors are also highly interdependent. The electric sector depends on oil and natural gas to fuel production plants. The oil and gas sector depends on electricity to power its control centers, business functions, and marketing and sales. Both sectors are also heavily dependent on the telecommunications and transportation sectors to move oil and gas from production areas to end users nationwide."

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

Answers

"There are no comprehensive studies concerning the number of entities that would have to fail to put the grid at risk, but some experts suggest that it may be a very small percentage if these failures occur in key locations. . ."

OK EXPERTS OUT THERE

Where are the key locations and what is the "very small percentage"?

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

CHICAGO AREA SOMEWHERE from an Alberta, Canada perspective is supposed to be a distribution hub for Canadian natural gas flowing into the eastern USA. Shut down that control center and its time to start draining water lines.....

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

Thank you, Jeff. Now if they had just mentioned Saudia Arabia, Arab Emerites, Africa, Venezuela, ports, tanker ships, refineries, pipelines....

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Let me correct the spelling of Saudi Arabia and I think that oil sector of the world would be best represented by using their collective name, OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. They all have the same computer/pipeline/embedded chip/systems problems.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

It's your fault, Rick. You passworded this forum, so the Senate hasn't read the engineers here telling us everything is fine.

I hope you are prepared to accept full responsibility for the Senate's misinformation. ;-)

And how stupid can those Senators be? Don't they know the sun is going to come up and the birdies go tweet tweet next year? Geesh.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

The report is loaded with phrases which allow a lot of wiggle room. There are at least 8 in the paragraphs listed here.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Local news in Central Florida is reporting that Bob Bennett says that Y2K is no problem. 2 people have shoved the " no big deal" in my face today because of the reporting on the Senates "good news".

I am bewildered to say the least as to why the press is reporting in this manner. I mean they must have at least read the Executive Summary of the report and they just simply can't be that stupid.

AND UH....... BONNIE, please dont let Factfinder keep you away.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Norm - Bonnie posted somewhere here earlier this week that she was having ISP problems. My guess is that the problems haven't yet been resolve

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Jeff, something caught my eye in part of the Senate Report you quoted. I went back and checked my printouts of the APPA Survey Results Breakdown as reported in the August NERC report to the DOE. I thought I remembered that APPA only gave the numbers of "overall" respondents to their June Survey of just their large and medium utility members, which it turns out they did. Therefore, the sentence from the Senate report, "Finally, and most alarming, is the fact that 270 of the 2,012 public power utilities, including some serving large metropolitan areas, did not participate in APPA's June survey.." does seem to indicate that the Senate Y2K Committee did have access to APPA survey disclosures which were NOT utility- anonymous. Otherwise, how could they state, "including some serving large metropolitan areas"? They would have to know which utilities did not respond to the June survey to gain that information, wouldn't they?

This may not seem like a big deal on the face of it, but there has been a lot of debate over whether or not the government actually knows any more details about Y2K status than interested citizens do. I would call that statement a solid clue that our government does know at least some specifics that have not been released to the public.

Does the non-response of a large municipal utility to the June survey necessarily mean that the utility is not ready? No. But it doesn't indicate it is, either. And since we know from other news articles that city-owned utilities (not just electric), became Y2K aware later than investor owned entities, and are also dependent on tax-paid budgets being approved a year in advance, it's not a big reach to conclude they have had the least time, funds and/or expertise available for assessment and remediation. Hence the Senators' concern.

**Norm, Rick had the right of it. Not only have I been having ISP troubles, but access to my e-mail still likely won't be available until this weekend or later. (grumble, grumble, gripe, gripe..) I'm looking at getting a second ISP as backup. Computers and I have a love/hate relationship right now! Besides, after getting four kids through their teen age years, nothing much scares me anymore. *wink* Even my serious concerns about the Year 2000 now fall into the category of "I've done what I can to prepare, and there's no sense fretting myself about the things I have no control over."

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Norm, I forgot that your comment, "and they just simply can't be that stupid" brought to mind the Wizard's First Rule (sci-fi novel by Terry Goodkind). By the end of the book, you find out that the Wizard's First Rule is:

"People Are Stupid."

Mr. Goodkind isn't the first Science Fiction writer to come up with that theme. Who knows? Maybe they're on to something?

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Bonnie, thank you SO much for the encouragement. You mean that I can really expect to safely get my six kids through their teen years?! Hey, let Y2K come or not. The tougher issues are settled!! ;)

-- Anonymous, September 25, 1999