http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/business.pat,business/3773f711.a29,.html

By DAVID HAYES and FINN BULLERS - Columnist Date: 10/29/99 22:15

Only one in seven "mom-and-pop" chemical firms is prepared for Y2K in an industry that lacks proper safeguards and the incentive to fix its own computer problems, a study showed this month.

Of firms surveyed in Kansas, Texas, California and New Jersey, only 13.5 percent have completed their Y2K preparations, the Texas A&M University survey found.

And more than 85 percent had failed to coordinate emergency plans with local officials, according to Sam Mannan, professor of chemical engineering and director of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Center at College Station, Texas.

The survey asked firms with 200 or fewer employees to name the worst thing that could happen: 4.1 percent said a "catastrophic event," 47 percent said "no problem" and 30 percent cited "economic disruption."

But what emerges from the study goes beyond Y2K.

Small- and medium-sized chemical handlers, Mannan found, are removed from technology advances, basic information and know-how, and they have few financial and technical resources to make safety improvements.

Based on those findings, the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Y2K & Society recommends that most chemical plants be required to take a "safety holiday" immediately before Jan. 1.

But John Koskinen, the president's Y2K point man, said that requiring chemical firms to go through shutdowns and power ups would create extra dangers. Instead, he recommends that each firm study the pros and cons and make its own decision.

Larger firms such as Monsanto, DuPont and Ashland Chemical have said in recent weeks they will temporarily suspend operations at some plants over the New Year's transition rather than run the risk of a midnight power failure triggering a toxic release.

Case in point: Air Products, another one of the nation's large chemical producers with 82 employees southwest of Wichita, is shutting down all 17 of its U.S. plants during the New Year's transition.

Although some plant officials say they are closing as a safety precaution, others have said the step is being taken as a safeguard against potential economic loss. Small variations in electric wattage normally do not affect the average consumer, but small surges, industry officials say, can ruin batches of chemicals.

An estimated 85 million Americans live within five miles of one of the 66,000 facilities nationwide that handle highly hazardous wastes.

We get e-mail

NBC Vice President for Broadcasting Rosalyn Weinman complained to us last week that aside from a few media inquiries about the network's "Y2K" movie (including ours), no "real people" have raised concerns about the decision to air the suspense thriller.

But Warren Bone, a Y2K consultant in Nashville, considers himself a "real person." And after reading of the network's plans to air the movie Nov. 21, Bone fired off a letter to NBC's programming department.

"You know as well as I do that the `average' TV viewer has a pretty low education level (is it still at the eighth-grade level?), and these viewers are going to believe that these events could really play out," Bone said in his e-mail letter.

"If NBC does air this movie, I am sure you will win the ratings sweeps. But I am afraid you are going to make a very bad situation much worse. Once 2000 gets here and things really do start happening...the world is going to be thinking about your movie and will not deal with these events in a rational way."

Another reader, Richard Markland of Covington, Ohio, caught our column on the Internet and summed up his feelings this way:

"I used to think that the Y2K problem will be our biggest enemy. I now have come to the conclusion that we, as the public, will be the biggest obstacle. Reaction is still mixed and yet the group mentality of unpreparedness will no doubt creep in and people will mentally hyperventilate as the weeks progress."

Not so, says the federal government's Koskinen. He's heard about the upcoming NBC movie and says the American people are smart enough to separate fact from fiction.

-- Deb (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), October 31, 1999