Has anyone studied if or how power disruptions could affect the availability of drinking water? While heat will be a consideration in the northern climates, availability of drinking water could become a major concern nationwide.

Don't the water purification and pumping stations require electricity for their operations? I understand many of them have their own backup power generation capabilities, but are those systems Y2k compliant?

Has anyone on this list looked into this?

Thanks in advance.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 1998

Answers

Potable water treatment and distribution and waste water collection and treatment require power for operation. Most of these services will have diesel generation backup but probably sized at a reduced capacity like 50% of maximum flow. If your city uses water towers then you will get an assist from gravity to maintain pressure for awhile. Also lift stations have some amount of storage capacity and won't immediately overflow. Remember also that fire protection is impacted by potable water pressure loss.

Check three items with your local utility: generation capacity as a percent of normal load, fuel capacity and runtime at each generator and their plans to refuel during the outage.

Jim

-- Anonymous, November 06, 1998

The truth is no long term back up exists for loss of generating power. Most cities will have little or no potable water within 3 days.If the power goes down you can bet alt. energy supplies like diesel and gas will dry up very fast. So having a back up generator will be of little use long term. Buckets anyone?

-- Anonymous, November 06, 1998

I am an engineering assistant at a public utilities department for a town of about 15,000. Our water plant has no backup generator. I have been in countless meetings where I recommend backup generation, but it gets shot down because of the large cost (non-budgeted item). The reasoning goes like this: If power is down for longer than our water towers can sustain (about 48 hours - maybe), then it may be down for an extended period of time where backup generators aren't a longterm solution.

Our local hospital is planning to have a water tanker truck parked on site with pumps to pump water up the 4 floors needed. I am concerned about our local kidney dialysis center which cannot afford to be without water period.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 1998

I have just been to see our local council (Australia) about power, water and sewerage contingency plans. The IT manager claims, that the grid can be cold started within 16 hours. His thoughts were if it goes down, then they will have it up and running in short order. When I questioned him, as to if the cause of the failure was still resident within the system, then wouldn't it just go down again he became concerned. Seems he hadn't thought of that. As to water pumping stations. He informed me that they had just installed new generators to cover any possibilty. When I asked him how long these generators would run for, he replied 12 hours. I mentioned that the grid could be down for far longer than that, or oil could be in short supply and once again he became concerned. As to the sewerage. No plans in place. If the power was down for an extended period they would just have to dump it into the ocean, or it would back up. He claimed that there was no alternative.

It seems that they had thought of contingency plans, but had not looked further ahead, than power being down for a short period of time.

Tunnel vision all round.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 1998

The truth is that almost all backup generators are never intended to run for more than three days, tops. We were located on the edge of last year's winter ice storm which hit upper New York State and parts of Canada. At the time of the power outage to the north, my husband was in hospital recovering from surgery. He, and all other patients who were deemed able to recover at home were released earlier than scheduled, to free up beds for the influx of patients coming from the hospitals located within the power outage area. Patients who were scheduled to be released but who lived in areas where the power was out, were put up in hotels to convalesce. There was a much larger evacuation of people from the affected areas than most people are aware of. Lots of people were also driving two or three hours to stay with others who did have heat, or just to buy milk and bread and fuel.

My brother-in-law and his wife spent weeks without electricity and only got through because they had a wood stove and a creek nearby. Not only do buckets apply, but breaking the ice is often necessary to get to the water. How fast do you think pipes and controls in pumping stations will freeze in the North in January if the power is off and there is no heat? And will they be usable even if the power comes back on or will they have burst from the freezing and need repair? The same with homes.

It's very hard to deal with, but if the power goes down in the winter to any large region anywhere, unless there is the capability to get outside help quickly and for many to travel to where there IS power, people will die. The longer the outage, the higher the fatality level. Some people have thought out all the implications of possible Y2K power outages. It's why they are trying so hard to promote personal preparations and community contingency plans. And why it can be so frustrating when so few listen. Storing water is a practical thing to do for the individual. Even if you have a well, you need power to pump the water out.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 1998

We were living in Minnesota in 1959, on a farm outside of St. Paul. Sometime that winter a long cold spell hit. We lost our water pressure. Since we were renting, the owner got things moving. When the servicemen came out they found that the main cutoff valve was outside had frozen and burst. It was supposed to be below the frost line, at seven feet down. Turned out it wasn't. They told us if we had kept the water flowing just a bit it probably wouldn't have frozen.

I can extrapolate from that to most of the communities in the northern tier of states and of course most of Canada. If the water supply is down long enough the water distribution system is likely to be badly damaged. And if homes, offices and commercial buildings don't have heat their plumbing will suffer too, unless throughly drained first.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 1998

Isn't it time to drill some wells or open up some old ones? - several families could cooperate to pay. There are still the old-fashioned hand-pumps available. Right now, I am just doing what I can do - keeping some gallons of bleach on hand and filling every empty glass bottle and storing it in the shed (thinking that this could happen in 1999).

-- Anonymous, November 17, 1998