From the Year2000 Announcement List, Dec 10,1999, published by John Huntress and Cliff Kurtzman--

An interesting thing happened last week that illustrated why Y2K continues to be so controversial. I lived most of my life in Santa Fe, so I watch the New Mexico news closely. I found a Y2K story in the Albuquerque Journal North last Thursday about the Santa Fe city council having to come up with the money to install the back-up generator for the sewage plant. http://www.abqjournal.com/news/23news12-02-99.htm

Just another local Y2K story, I thought, but the last paragraph surprised me. It said that officials of the Public Service Company (PNM), the major electric utility for the state, said there was a "high probability" of blackouts lasting "several hours" on Jan. 1, and they couldn't rule out longer outages. I knew there was something wrong with the story because I have been talking to people in electrical utilities for almost three years and nobody ever told me anything as dire as that. I knew what the line was from all of the main people in the industry, and even though the utility industry "speaks with one voice" on Y2K, I agree with their view because all the engineers in the field I talk to say the same thing. They can't find anything that scares them.

The first thing I did was call Jody Larson, NM state agency Y2K Coordinator and an old friend. I built an addition to her house back in the days when I was a solar designer/builder (another incarnation). She told me my addition was still standing and that the Y2K story was at odds with PNMs web site. She directed me to their public relations officer, Don Brown and I got him just as he was leaving the house. I read him the paragraph and he immediately told me the story was totally false. He got back to me in a couple hours and said PNM was doing an immediate press release while they tried to get a retraction from the Albuquerque Journal. He told me that PNM didn't even expect noticeable voltage fluctuations for the rollover.

Within a couple hours the story hit several Y2K lists and was being discussed as fact. Later I talked with the reporter, Miguel Navrot. He based the last paragraph on a quote someone at PNM gave him last summer. The Journal stuck by his story because they thought the original quote was accurate, even though it was at odds with what the NERC and every other utility in the country was saying. PNM paid little attention to the August story because they didn't hear about it until several weeks later, it wasn't picked up on the net, and in New Mexico everybody ignored it.

An interesting aside is that Ed Yourdon seemed to believe the story and was quoted on Charles Reuben's list with:

[I don't know the background of Santa Fe's Y2K efforts, so I have nothing to add to the article. But I was intrigued by the comment in the final paragraph, to the effect that the electric utility company is now saying that there is a "high" probability that power might be out for a few hours. In the briefings they gave all over New Mexico back in February, they said that the probability of such a failure was "low" or maybe "modest." When we tried to pin them down as to what meant, one representative shrugged and said, "Oh, I don't know ... maybe one chance in a hundred." ] Ed Yourdon

And Ed was a member of New Mexico's Y2K Advisory Council too.

Don Brown of PNM just mailed me with a follow up and said he was satisfied even though he couldn't get a retraction and the clarification story (also on our clippings list) didn't clarify very much. The people whose reaction he was most concerned about, his customers in New Mexico, were again completely ignoring the story.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 10, 1999

Answers

Lars,

Well, since there seems to be some concern about "accuracy" here, let me clarify one point: I was a member of New Mexico's IT Advisory Council during 1999, but because of constant schedule conflicts, I was never able to attend any of the Council's meetings. The council may have had Y2K on its agenda from time to time, but as far as I know, its primary concern was setting policies and priorities for the overall use of IT within the state government.

I also had a very brief (two-day) engagement as a sub-contractor to the consulting firm that did some Y2K IV&V work for the state government agencies. As a result, I was privy to some information about the status of some mission-critical systems within some of the gov't agencies, as of May 1999; I think I've signed a non-disclosure agreement about the information I saw, but in any case, the ethical standards of a consulting relationship would prevent me from talking about the details unless I thought lives were in imminent danger, or some heinous crimes were being committed (neither of which seemed to be true).

In any case, PNM, the electric utility company, is obviously not part of the state government, and I didn't have access to anything other than the information presented to public audiences by PNM spokesmen in the early spring of this year. As for the question of whether I "believe the story" ... well, you've got the quote correct, and as you can see, I simply said that I was "intrigued". By the way, that statement was made on THIS forum when the news first popped up -- if Charlie Reuben picked it up and distributed it on his list, I wouldn't be surprised if he was attempting to use it to prove that I'm a Communist terrorist or some such thing.

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), December 10, 1999.

Neal,

Could you give us more details on the system crashes that occurred on Friday? Is there any particular reason to assume that the crashes were Y2K-related, as opposed to normal, run-of-the-mill crashes?

Thanks, Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), December 11, 1999.

Mr.Lars,

Sir I helped build the San Juan power generation complex at Farmington, New Mexico. I was there when it was just bare ground, untill the first unit was brought on line. I might suggest that you re-think your possible conclusions about the possibility of there being embed systems failure at this complex..I would suggest you think about the H2S detection system...The stack sensors..The fuel oil injectors on the boiler fronts..The controller for the ball mills (this is where the coal is crushed into dust). I would also check out the make up water areas. I would suggest highly that the vibration sensors buried in the turbine pedestal area be checked..

I have said once before..PNM will have little trouble (because of the old four corners powerhouse built in the 50's-60's) which can run with out trouble- it was the last time I was in it's interior, still analog in it's controls..

I know that PNM can disengage from the grid, thusly saving N. mexico (if fed.gov allows them to).

-- Shakey (in_a_bunker@forty.feet), December 11, 1999.

Lars,

I would not take the word of any Public Service Company or New Mexico State goverment official as 100% true. PNM has in the past lied to its employees, stockholders, and customers. I see no reason to believe them when they say PNM is Y2K ready. Be advised the State Taxation and Revenue computers CRASHED on friday as well as the Motor Vehicle Department. So much for MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS being Y2K ready.

Neal Maben

-- Neal Maben (vaughn@trailnet.com), December 11, 1999.

Ed,

I trust the source of my information on the state computers. It is hard to get any company to admit that a system failure is Y2K related and certainly no government department head will. It is my understanding that the failures of these systems were due to testing of Y2K repairs. They hope to fix the problems over the weekend. One clarification, the Motor Vehicle Department system I spoke of is actually the Department of Public Saftey (Police) system that interfaces with the Motor Vehicle Department.

Neal

-- Neal Maben (vaughn@trailnet.com), December 11, 1999.

The references to PNM seem to have been removed from the article mentioned above. All that remains is the story about Santa Fe's hurried purchase and installation of a generator for the wastewater treatment plant.

I don't give a toss what some PR flak tells the media. That the city council of Santa Fe, which takes months to dispose of relatively minor issues like road paving, moved to purchase a generator for the plant in September and is now rushing to have the generator operational before year-end, tells me all I need to know about their view on PNM's remediation status.

"We have to get this installed by the end of the month," said waste water director Qustandi Kassisieh. "We're working under an emergency now."

Why is it an emergency, Mr. Kassisieh? Because so many Santa Feans will ring in the New Year with a celebratory flush of their low-flow? Or maybe because the good folks at Tomasita's are planning to add more beans to the burritos New Year's Eve?

Or could it be that our diligent civil servants have received some, uh, important information from our friends at PNM?

"I just don't like it when we do things this way," said Councilor Patti Bushee, who sits on the committee. "We had no choice whether or not to approve it."

Sure, you had a choice, Patti. You could have believed the happy-face PR that PNM has been shoveling to its customers and shareholders. Why buy a generator when PNM has assured us all that we should expect no degredation of service? Why rush to install it? Hell, the generator can wait 'til spring or summer, right? Right???

Three more weeks.

-- Another Lurker (lurk@santa.fe), December 12, 1999.