Does anyone know of a status report for Canadian Water facilities? It would be interesting to know whehter or not Canada is in the same predicament as the US.

Llama

-- Llama man (llama@cool.net), December 13, 1999

Answers

Llama man You didn't mention where in Canada and that might be important. There is not much out there but this is from Industry Canada testimony presented a year ago. Makes for interesting reading.

 Municipal and Water - Wastewater

 (This Testimony is split from the Municipal )

Industry Canada Testimony

STANDING COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRY
 
 

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, December 8, 1998

Terry, George (Canadian Water and Wastewater
Association; Ontario Clean Water Agency)

The Chair (Ms. Susan Whelan (Essex, Lib.)): I'll call the
meeting to order, pursuant to Standing Order 108 subsection 2, a study
on information technology: preparedness for year 2000.
 
 

Mr. George Terry (Vice-President, Information and
Technology, Ontario Clean Water Agency, Canadian Water
and Wastewater Association): Thank you. I'm happy to be here
today as an industry representative of the Canadian Water and
Wastewater Association.

The Ontario Clean Water Agency operates more than 400 water and
waste water facilities across Ontario, and our range of Y2K problems
basically represents fairly all the types of problems being faced across
the country.

Snip

Utility systems such as water and waste water are largely controlled by
computers, PLCsor programmable logic controllershuman-machine
interfaces, and a variety of sensors, scales, flow meters, pH meters, and
other instruments. Any or all of these could be affected by the Y2K.

The Ontario Clean Water Agency has a team in place to resolve the year
2000 problem. The focus will be on the potential impact of Y2K on
operations of our clients' water and waste water facilities, as well as our
office and corporate support systems.

Municipalities that are not our clients and those in other provinces also
have Y2K teams in place. The comments that follow apply equally to
them.

Snip
 
 

We and non-client municipalities in Ontario and municipalities in other
provinces are finding some systems that are Y2K non-compliant. Our
solutions range from a temporary fix, like a standard clock set back to
ensure that it runs over the 2000, to a full system replacement. The
replacement of old non-compliant systems is expensive, but it offers the
benefits of better control and increased automation.

Snip

Thanks.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Terry.

The Chair: Mr. Terry, did you have any comments with regard to the
water system in terms of Mr. Jones' question as to the state of readiness
in the different provinces? Can you talk on that at all?

 0935
 

Mr. George Terry: All the provinces and municipalities have
developed Y2K teams. They're all in various states of Y2K readiness.
The Ontario Clean Water Agency, as I mentioned, has a very strong
contingency plan in place for Y2K.

Our plan primarily is to roll back to fully hard-wired operations or fully
manual operations prior to the Y2K turnover. We want to make sure that
all of our systems will have been fully Y2K upgraded by September
1999. That means we will have gone through all phases of our plan to
ensure Y2K compliance. We're an essential service, and we recognize
that fact.

As a secondary safeguard, all of our utilities will do a two-week trial on
manual operations prior to September 1999. The purpose of this is to
ensure that people are retrained. We're going to re-evaluate our
contingency plans. We're re-evaluating our operations manuals to make
sure we entrench in each person any concerns we have during this
manual time. We have put together a schedule that allows us to make
sure suppliers are notified, chemicals and fuel oils are on site, and
vehicles are checked.

For those of you who may not know this, most new vehicles have up to
50 microprocessors on board. So you have to even check right down to
the level of vehicles being up and running should this event take place.
Mr. Knight has spoken primarily about firmware. It's not known at this
time whether or not many of the chips in cars and other vehicles and in
your computers are will be Y2K compliant.

First, I don't want people going away from here worried about the water
and waste water industries not recognizing Y2K as a problem and not
moving quickly to get it addressed. We're not only moving quickly,
we're making sure our contingency plans are trialled and proofed prior to
then.

Where we find holes in the systemssay we require additional
generation or additional computers to be available to uswe will make
sure that we have that on site. Our staff will be on site with fully manual
operations for December. For those of you who don't know, December
31 is a Friday. As such, our holidays are going to be on the Monday.
The guys are going to appreciate that a lot, I'm sure. But by the same
token, all of our staff will be there and will be ready. They will be fully
trained again in manual operations. So those people who grew up with
the automated systems will be back to understanding their basic
operations.

Our plan is to make sure that every water tower and reservoir is full as of
10 a.m. on that Friday night. Every sewage lift station's pump well will
have been pumped down to zero. So if we have an event that takes place,
we'll be ready for it.

Now, our plants will go off the grid at 10 a.m. on December 31. They
will be slowly phased out. We will go to manual operations on full
generator backup. I really believe that Ontario Hydro is going to be in a
place to actually provide power to all of our municipalities. We're just
safeguarding our instrumentation in this regard.

As we come to January 1, we're going to start to phase back our
instrumentation in steps. That's all part of our contingency plan. Then
we'll bring our plants back on into service.

That's our plan to date. We have made this available to other
municipalities. We're working with the environment ministry to address
those municipalities that aren't directly affected by the Ontario Clean
Water Agency and also the ones that may not be our clients, because we
truly only run 30% of the province of Ontario. That's just so you know.

Does that help?

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Terry.

I just want to alert you to something that was brought to the committee's
attention. I'm sure everyone's kind of cringing from your statement that
you're going to go to full power based on generators on December 31.
We were told very clearly by Ontario Hydro and the Atomic Energy
Control Board that the worst-case scenario is for people to go off and
use their regular state of power. If you're going to do this, you need to
let them know. If people all shut off their power, it creates a surge in the
system, which is worse than the other possibility. It's very important
that you deal with Ontario Hydro. Maybe you're already doing that. But
they were very clear to us that they didn't want people to shut off their
power, because it was going to cause all kinds of problems in the
systems.

Mr. George Terry: That's fine from Ontario Hydro's perspective.
I've spoken to Ontario Hydro on this issue. They recognize that we're an
essential service; we have no choice. With all due respect, I have to
ensure that my clients have water and waste water services the next day.
Nobody cares what happens regarding how I get there.

I've been working with Ontario Hydro to make sure that at the end of the
day they know I'll phase my plants off. As a matter of fact, I have
already spoken to them about a scheduled phase-down so that they know
I'm not going to slap their grid.

The Chair: That's the point.

 0940
 

Mr. George Terry: That's so you know. It's not only Ontario Hydro;
not only am I working with the emergency measures office to offer
additional assistance to their municipalities that may come into some
conflict, but I'm also working with the military to make sure that if they
have a water problem we can help.

Mr. Jaffer.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: I have a few questions for Mr. Terry, actually.

Snip

The other side of Y2K is the ability of your municipality to truly put a
crisis plan in place. When this is all done and Y2K comes and goes,
you're not really losing anything. The plan you put in place for Y2K will
be there for the next ice storm, for the next major event that happens in
your municipality. I know there's a huge cost coming forward with
Y2K, but this isn't lost money; this money is invested in the staff who
operate your essential services.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Jaffer.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), December 13, 1999.

A quote from the gentleman in charge of the Water Purifying Plant in Red Deer AB, Canada, regarding Waste Water. "If it looks like the sewers will back up into the low-lying areas, we will empty into the Red Deer River and pay the fines later."

I told him I liked his attitude - "practical" when absolutely necessary.

-- Laurane (familyties@rttinc.com), December 16, 1999.

Laurane

How will the folks downstream cope with that?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), December 16, 1999.

He didn't say - but I guess Drumheller will be really put out....what choice does a city have, if the sewage floods houses and businesses, and people realise it could have flowed away downriver "out of sight, out of mind".

Calgary will do the same I imagine - can you visualise the mess in Elbow Park?

-- Laurane (familyties@rttinc.com), December 16, 1999.

Uh oh. Hope Banff and Canmore aren't working with the same game plan.

-- RAchel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), December 16, 1999.