On the Electric Utilities & Y2K website (www.euy2k.com), the open forum contains a thread giving a first hand report on the lack of progress with a water utility.

Water Utility Y2K Status

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), December 02, 1998

Answers

Worth commenting that there's some good news at the same site. Under "news" you'll find a report about a power station that was recently shut down and Y2K-tested. Summary: a few glitches, no showstoppers.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), December 03, 1998.

http://www.h otcoco.com/news/statfront/kbk03664.htm

December 19, 1998, BY LARRY GERBER, AP
Water Groups Ready For 2000 Glitch

ANAHEIM -- A U.S. senator warned Friday of a "ripple effect" that could result in dirty water or dry taps if suppliers don't have their equipment and people ready for what threatens to be the world's biggest computer glitch Jan. 1, 2000.

Officials at a field hearing, however, said most big water suppliers were ready to handle the bug, or nearly so. The main concern, experts said, is smaller, independent agencies who are unaware of the problem or may not be able to deal with it.
....
At the state-of-the-art Lenain Water Treatment Plant overlooking this city of 300,000 south of Los Angeles, officials gave the senator a tour and went over precautions they have taken.

The steps go well beyond the simple expedient already known to many home computer operators, said Greg Russell, the plant's senior electrical engineer.

That solution is to "fool" one's computer by setting the date to December 1983. Since 1984's days of the weeks and months match 2000's, only the year would be wrong.

Manual controls have been installed at the 3-year-old plant here, said manager Richard Mathis, and all staff will be on call to keep purification and pumping systems running by hand if necessary.

Potentially troublesome computer chips have already been inventoried.
"If we need to replace an embedded chip or something, we'll have time to do that," he said.

Long-term power outages could cause bigger problems, Bennett warned, so suppliers should have generators ready. And one plant's troubles could spill over onto others that may be prepared, he said.

" 'Upstream' contamination caused by a malfunctioning waste-water treatment plant could have a direct impact on a fresh water treatment facility located downstream " he said. "The ripple effect in such a case is obvious."
....
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The above article did not give me a good feeling.
Programmers, do they sound ready to you? Will their "fix" work?

xxxxxxx xx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), December 21, 1998.

Leska,

Someone there seems to be calendar-impaired.

>Since 1984's days of the weeks and months match 2000's, only the year would be wrong.

NO.

January 1, 1984 was a Sunday.

January 1, 2000 will be a Saturday.

It takes an offset of 28 years (2000 -> 1972) or a multiple of 28, to get the same cycling of weekday correspondences to days of month.

But there's a problem with that, too -- some PCs won't accept a pre-1980 date.

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), December 21, 1998.