Curious about what would happen when the new millennium ticks in, a water-purification plant in Utah set its clocks ahead to Jan. 1, 2000. With computers ill-equipped to handle the new date, the plant malfunctioned, dumping poisonous quantities of chlorine and other chemicals into the water. Read the rest of the article here: http://www.sltrib.com/01181999/utah/75860.htm

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), January 22, 1999

Answers

I couldn't get to that link, but there was a story at this site (http://www.sltrib.com/1999/jan/01181999/utah/75860.htm) that basically wondered where in Utah the above "test" took place, and no one seems to know. Hmmmmm.

-- (u@ta.h), January 22, 1999.

As pointed out in Y2Knewswire - an offending deadly chemical water additive is also flouride. Flouride is a "rat poison". Fluorides are medically categorized as protoplasmic poisons, which is why they are used to kill rodents. It was manufactured, first of all, as a poison product. If the companies couldn't sell it to the government via the contract that touts maliciously erroneous, unproven data that flouride assists dental health (laugh), do you know what they would have to do with the surplus flouride? They would have to PAY to have it placed in a TOXIC WASTE FACILITY. It is heavily diluted into city water. The time and date functions of water additives is critical in city water systems. Store at LEAST 2 weeks worth of water from your local stores and refrain from drinking city water until the officials can say 100% that the "water is totally safe to drink".

Read the following on Y2Knewswire.com:

* Fatal fluoride overdose has already happened * Y2K could bring it on again * Fluoride overfeeds have already killed people * Here's the evidence * Y2K could cause the exact same thing * Yet more evidence: Mississippi in 1993 * Yet again in a New Mexico elementary school in 1980 * Fluoride poisoning in 1993 * More fluoride poisonings across the country * The potential for fluoride poisonings always exists * Why on Earth? * Fluoride poisonings are most likely to kill children * How to know if you're drinking fluoride * Stockpile your own water supply now

Find it all at: http://www.y2knewswire.com/19990120.htm

For that fact, let your toothpaste join mine in the TRASH can and get yourself a BIG, CHEAP box of baking soda. My teeth haven't been this bright in years.....

-- Mr. Kennedy (y2kPCfixes@MotivatedSeller.com), January 22, 1999.

Yeah I read that second link. The story goes like this:

1) Bennett says somebody told him that their facility ran the test and had this massive failure. But he's promised not to say which facility it was.

2) So a reporter goes around to all the facilities and says, "Was it you?" And of course they all say, "No, no, not us!"

Obviously they wouldn't have sworn Bennett to secrecy if they were willing to admit it openly. Of course Bennett could have made the whole thing up, and if he were just some joker on the Internet like me I might believe that, but given who he is I think my scenario is more likely.

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), January 22, 1999.

A few comments:

It's old news.

The purpose of doing a test is to find the bugs. If the plant was no longer connected to the public water supply, there's no reason to be particularly cautious. Find out what goes wrong and fix it. What you should worry about is a utility that doesn't (or can't) test!

I very much hope that any plant that hasn't fully tested its flouridation equipment will do the obvious; turn it off. Flouride in water isn't essential. On the other hand, too much chlorine is no worse than none; one way you get poisoned (if you're stupid enough to drink water that looks and smells like bleach), the other way you get cholera (without knowing there's a risk until too late).

I wish Senator Bennett would tell us why the plant that did this test doesn't want us to know. Spun correctly (ie that the plant is now fully debugged and Y2K-ready), what are they worried about? Either nothing, or a great many other plants they run? Ingorance breeds fear in some and complacency in others; neither is good. Or did he make it up to get the Y2K ball rolling? Not impossible, and not altogether a bad thing in the circumstances.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 22, 1999.

YAWN - DOUBLE YAWN. I have seen the flouride story go by so many times in my life (45 years and counting) that I have now lost count. At least half a dozen major cycles - lord knows how many minor ones. Just an engineering note here - canisters of potentially poisonous chemicals that are added to drinking water are designed to be too small to add a poisonous amount to the water undergoing treatment, even if the entire amount was dumped. It is called 'fail safe' engineering.

One example I remember was from a water plant (I think in New York State) - their hopper could only contain .5 tons of flouride - to poison the water in the storage facility would require 400 tons.

Nuff said.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), January 22, 1999.

Of course you have URLs and references for those statements, don't you, Paul?

-- doubting (thomas@net.net), January 22, 1999.

doubting:

You can carry doubt a bit too far. Doubt is good, but believe it or not, there are sources here *more* reliable than URL's pointing to writeups by reporters who know little about the subject and understand less.

I admit bias, but engineers aren't universally dumb, careless, or shortsighted. Every aspect of a design is carefully examined for considerations of cost, efficiency, safety, durability, error handling, maintenance, manufacturability, transportability, and replacement. Stupid mistakes are rare.

Of course, when allegations are made that undefined tests caused undescribed (but serious) problems for unknown reasons and *nobody* can track down any details whatever, I entertain doubts myself. Sometimes the story comes out that a simulation revealed a possible problem, usually due to a simulation error. But by the time it reaches the grapevine and gets passed around a few times, nothing is left of what *actually* happened, and the remaining wild and woolly stories become another Milne 'fact'.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 22, 1999.

>>I admit bias, but engineers aren't universally dumb, careless, or shortsighted. Every aspect of a design is carefully examined for considerations of cost, efficiency, safety, durability, error handling, maintenance, manufacturability, transportability, and replacement. Stupid mistakes are rare. <<

And yet, this forum is dedicated to the consequences of a universal, dumb, careless, shortsighted computer problem. Ain't it ironic?

-- Elbow Grease (Elbow_Grease@AutoShop.com), January 22, 1999.

Elbow, it's ironic all right. Programmers expected their code to be long gone by 2000, and they were right. They expected the hardware to be replaced many times, and they were right. But protocols, now, that's a different story.

Why are railroad tracks in the US as wide as they are (I think 4 feet 6 inches)? Because the first railroads in this country were built by British contractors, and that's how far apart theirs were, so the used the same jigs and measurements.

And why were British rails that far apart? The first British railroads were built by the tramway builders, who used *their* tools.

And why were the trams that wide? Because that was the distance between the wheels of the horse-drawn carriages, and the tramway builders used carriage wheels as their models.

And why were carriage wheels that far apart? Because that's how far apart the ruts were that the carriages used, on all those old dirt roads throughout Britain at the time. If the wheels were closer or further, they'd break because they wouldn't fit those ruts.

And where did those ruts come from? They were the remainders of the old Roman road system, dug over time by the Roman 2-horse war chariots. Those chariot wheels were just as wide as two Roman war horses, and no more and no less.

Our railroad's gauge is therefore just as wide as two Roman war horses side by side in the Roman harnesses.

Moral: as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined. Backward compatibility is forever.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 22, 1999.

New England Journal of Medicine, Center for Disease Control, and other University Medical studies as well as government documents display hundreds of near fatal and many fatal flouride poisoning incidents in communities and school systems. View a large list, if you care to : http://www.y2knewswire.com/19990120.htm

If individual containers at water plants are too small to provide enough toxins to "poison" the water, who is responsible for hooking up all the little containers at once to create these poisoning cases?

Besides, "technology" will handle the proper distribution. It would be silly to hang up a 5 gallon jug when we can put up a 500 gallon tank and let our superior "technology" regulate it. Why, we wouldn't have to change the tank for a whole 6 months.......

-- Mr. Kennedy (y2kPCfixes@MotivatedSeller.com), January 23, 1999.

"Why are railroad tracks in the US as wide as they are (I think 4 feet 6 inches)? Because the first railroads in this country were built by British contractors, and that's how far apart theirs were, so the used the same jigs and measurements."

Guess you haven't heard about the old "narrow gauge" railroads huh?

-- Sheila (sross@bconnex.net), January 23, 1999.

Sheila, that's an excellent illustration, and is a good cast study in why standards exist and what happens when they're ignored. The genesis of the standard railroad gauge still goes back to the Romans, though, and it's intended as an illustration of how protocols take hold and never let go.

A small minority of companies actually did adopt an internal standard of using full 4-digit years, cropping off the first to when communicating with the outside world.

A roughly equally small minority is expanding their years to 4 digits today -- it's just too hard. Yes, they could have done this if they'd started a *lot* earlier and spent a *lot* more money. They didn't, choosing instead to window or encapsulate or whatever, and postpone the problem a little longer. Nominally, this 'gives them time' to do it right, without an expensive crash program. In reality, they'll postpone the job until they *must* expand the years, and they'll wait until the last minute, and again miss the deadlines. We can confidently expect date bugs to continue to crop up sporadically over the next 50 years, with a spike in 2038. And they probably *still* won't expand the years.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 23, 1999.