CLINTON TOWNSHIP -- Detroit water officials will be on the hot seat tonight, when citizens and politicians ask why 4.3 million customers went five days without water, due to the August power blackout.

But critics are unlikely to hear any apologies from Detroit Water and Sewerage Department officials. They say water was restored quickly, given the magnitude of the outage.

And boil water warnings couldn't be lifted due to stringent state water testing requirements that exceed other states' standards.

Detroit Water Department authorities reassured their customers that the system was prepared to handle a massive emergency, according to state Sen. Laura Toy, R-Livonia, who called tonight's hearing. Toy will demand an accounting of the $52 million that Metro Detroit water users paid in 1999 for Y2K preparations that should have covered the power outage.

"They have five service areas and two weren't up and running," said Toy, who is vice chairwoman of the Senate Technology and Energy Committee. "Why were we not back on the water (sooner) when Ohio was up and running, and Illinois was up and running?

"Detroit was the last to get done. Whether it was a water issue or a quality issue is unclear. It's been a wake-up call for all of us, and we want to be sure we're on solid ground when it comes to something as precious as water."

Water Department spokesman George Ellenwood said every penny of the $52 million paid by users for Y2K preparations went to buy generators. But even though the system had generators last month, they couldn't be turned back on with the flick of a switch, he said.

"There are 45 generators, each of which is 2 megawatts. That's a lot of electricity. These are at 14 different locations, at water pumping stations, at sewer pumping stations," Ellenwood said.

Firing up the system too fast, after losing all electricity, could have damaged water pipes, he said. The state Department of Environmental Quality has praised water officials for getting the system back on line with very few breaks, he added.

"When you have plants the size of ours, that pump 240 million or 540 million gallons per day, things just don't get turned off and turned back on. It's like turning an ocean liner on a dime."

Even though most of the system was operating at full pressure 30 hours after the outage started, Detroit customers had to wait for extensive water tests to be completed, Ellenwood said.

"It's a hard thing to draw comparisons. In Ohio, under their practices, they take one water test in an area and they can release that neighborhood. In our system, we take two samples in 48 hours -- and those have to be done across the whole system before they could be released," he said.

The majority of Metro Detroit communities are satisfied with how the department handled the crises, Ellenwood said. Farmington City Manager Vincent Pastue said Detroit Water and Sewerage handled the emergency adequately.

"Given the magnitude of what happened, there are some limitations, and we did not experience widespread water shortage throughout our community," Pastue said.

Still, officials such as Mayor Jack Kirksey of Livonia, where taps were dry for five days, think explanations are in order. Kirksey said he was convinced by water officials that Y2K preparations equipped the system to handle a widespread power outage.

"When Livonia experienced a total loss of water through the blackout, we were in a very precarious position because there was nothing in our fire hydrants -- so we could see that was an erroneous understanding that had occurred with the Y2k communication," Kirksey said.

"Weren't we misled into thinking they would have enough capability for maintaining pressure? We'd like to get some answers."

Detroit News

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2003