( snip ) A system designed to avert a Y2K bug created a water shortage for some Incline Village residents over the weekend. The general improvement district installed a new telemetry system to control pumps at 12 reservoirs because the original system was not Y2K compliant. The Reno Gazette-Journal reports the system broke down early Saturday, draining four reservoirs and leaving 500 customers without water. District officials are trying to determine what caused the problem.

url.http://www.unitedstates.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?article=11027

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), July 13, 1999

Answers

http://www.unitedstates.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?article=11027

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 13, 1999.

<< District officials are trying to determine what caused the problem. >>

Hell - what caused the problem was inadequate testing before they put the revised system back in operation!

But - give them credit for trying to remediate, give them credit for correctly identifying and eliminating a "real" y2k failure in the water supply, give them credit for getting their solution in place early enough that they were able to test it during the summer, give them credit for being early enough that they can identify and correct the newly-introduced failure mode.

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And learn from their error - if your water company has not properly tested, it will likely fail next year. We just don't know yet what will fail, nor where it will fail, nor how long the failure will last.

And - less than 1/3 of the 50,000 odd water companies in the US have reported that they have even started a repair program. (Some of these who "failed to report" to the EPA "may" be remediating their systemsanyway, but most observers believe that if a company has any type of remediation effort underway, that company will report some level of progress rather than ignore the legal reporting requirement.)

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), July 13, 1999.

Sure sounds similar to the New Berlin problem:

In New Berlin, residents were left without water this week after a new computer system designed to sidestep Y2K problems malfunctioned. Two main water tanks drained when computers failed to activate pumps to fill them. Residents had to ration their water.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), July 13, 1999.