Local Power

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

We live in rural southern MN. Our little town had its own power plant before it started buying from Alliant. About six months ago, an Alliant spokeswoman stated publicly that they weren't sure they would be able to guarantee service, and advised subscribers to look into alternative sources of power. Of course, Alliant's wonks went into cardiac arrest, and said there was no truth in her statement, but the cat was finally out of the bag. We might be all right. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but in August, the city renovated their diesel-powered generating plant and installed a cooling tower. The next time we drove by there, there were two large tanker trucks, apparently unloading fuel into two 100,000 gal. storage tanks. Besides this source, we also have a very large Green Giant corn/pea cannery in town which has made an agreement with the city to provied emergency power and water from their private, high-capacity sources. We'll at least have water and sewer service for a while.

-- Liz Pavek (lizpavek@hotmail.com), November 26, 1999

Answers

--hey! good for ya'all! wish about 200,000 other municipaities and big companies had done the same by now! I checked the local "stuff' around here..for the "city" anyway..HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

it's only cool here because of all the farms that already have generators, large quantites of stored food, plenty of water in various forms, and the mindset of "do it yourself, the fed gov sucks, the state ain't much better, and we go deer hunting with the local"--also as a by the way I haven't seen ONE stinking clinton/gore bumper sticker here. In 'lanta, it's infested..........

zoggus

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), November 26, 1999.


Have you asked anyone how long that 100,000 gals of diesel will last? I'm thinking of what Mary Ellen Hanley, the Y2K program director for Washington DC, said on 60 Minutes last May: contingency plans for a one to two week blackout. THen Representative George Grindley's statement that Koskinen had told state folks to be ready for 3 weeks without power (doc at Gary North, "Power Grid," May 27, 1999). This morning got an email forward from the President of millennialgoods.com that said "a well respected friend of ours...got tthe inside skivvy from PG&E...California will experience one month of blackouts and rolling brownouts, and the power system in the stte will take another two years to fix."

Good luck.

-- johno (jobriy2k@yahoo.com), November 26, 1999.


The content of that May interview with Mary Ellen Hanley, the Washington Y2K director, can be read in full on

this page

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), November 26, 1999.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ