Suggestion on Abq NM

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I've been involved in community awareness efforts for the City of Albuquerque. Our web page is at http://www.cabq.gov/y2k. The community awareness stuff is under the community awareness personal preparedness tab, If you can, please give me suggestions. I've been speaking to groups around NM and would like to contact anyone in Albuquerque to continue and enlarge community preparations. Our utility, PNM, was recently recorded (in a local mag Computer Scene) that stockpiling wood is a good idea

here's the article as there is no url

Wood could come in handly when year 2000 arrives

A cord of wood could be a hot item when the Year 2000 arrives.

Participants in a Year 200 summit held recently in Santa Fe were told by an official of Public Service Company of New Mexico that keeping some extra firewood on hand might be a good idea.

"We ar going to make every effort...to make sure there is no interruption in the supply of natural gas and electricity in the Year 2000," said Scott Witschger, the Year 2000 Program director for Public Service Company of New Mexico. "But as the mayor (Larry Delgado) said, we've never done this before".

PNM officials said the utility expects to spend about $19.6 million to prepare for possible computer problems.

About 65 people took part in the Y2K Summit sponsored by the city of Santa Fe. They shared information on everything from tips for Y2K-compliance testing to National Guard contingency plans for possible emergencies.

Information from the summit will be presented to the Santa Fe City Council early this year for consideration of what role the city should take to help prepare for 2000.

Efforts to avoid problems caused by the failure of old computer systems to recognize the year 2000 is causing major expenses for government agencies, banks, hospitals, schools, utilities, and others.

PNM alone has 79 people overseeing its wide -reaching program for Y2K compliance.

Distribution networks for electricity and natural gas rely on remote radio signals that modify supplies to meet demands. Power-generating stations are controlled via computer monitoring of such data as boiler temperatures and water pressures. The company also has to work with its suppliers to ensure that coal and natural gas production and distribution won't be crippled by computer failures from these vendors.

And PNM must share notes with other electric companies to try to avoid failures elsewhere in the electrical grid that could alter PNM's power distribution.

The company is even making preparations for establishing customer payment plans in the event that people are laid off from work because of Y2K problems.

"So we won't cur anybody's gas off at that time of year," Witschger said.

I'm updating the community awareness COA page soon with more links. ABQ is working on a coordinated 'tabletop' with PNM, USWest, schools, hospitals. should happen in feb and hopefully monthly thereafter.

thanks s

-- Sharon Schultz (shalom100@aol.com), January 02, 1999

Answers

Having grown up in Albuquerque (See I can spell it ;>)) You need to focus on water. If the power goes down you can't pump from those wells! That city rapidly becomes completely unsustainable.

Think generators

Think fuel

Think water

LM

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), January 02, 1999.


The water, as far as we can tell, is going to be there. we have nine days worth of water available in the reseviours, and the water is basically on a gravity feed system. the reseviours are controlled by a old computerized system called auto-8, but it was installed back in the mid eighties (around 1986 - that was one of the first projects i worked on in the city - i'm a systems analyst there) but the manual controls were left on, so if need be we can open/close the water manually

the problem comes with the liquid waste lift stations - we are still getting them certified and we have 20 of them, with only 4 generators to run them. so that is unknown at this time

power - we have been working with pnm, our service provider, but have not been able to get a lot of info out of them. we are trying to get them to join us in a contingency planning sessions, and so far we expect them to show at the jan 25 one. any contingency plan they put into place must be approved by a newly elected body that convenes in jan. so i am encouraging people to contact the public regulation commission in santa fe (224 marion hall, santa fe, nm) and get them to take action on the preparation of contingency plans.

if anyone wants to exhange more info on community preparations and awareness for abq contact me at the shalom100@aol.com or at the city at sschultz@cabq.gov or post here.....

s

-- Sharon Schultz (shalom100@aol.com), January 02, 1999.


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