* * * 19990624 Thursday

Subject: [Utilities]Flint River (MI) polluted after Y2K sewage treatment test(?)...

Can anyone in the Flint, Michigan (MI) area confirm the telephone message I received yesterday in which the caller said that the Flint River was polluted by raw sewage -- also causing a fish-kill -- after the City of Flint ran a Y2K sewage treatment test. ( Van Nuys, CA De ja vu? )

I have been unable to substantiate this alleged incident.

TIA!

Regards, Bob Mangus

* * *

-- Robert Mangus (rmangus@hotmail.com), June 24, 1999

Answers

Evidently it happened 2 weeks ago...found this on a local TV website. No mention of Y2K testing.

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E-Coli Levels Continue To Drop In Saginaw River

(WNEM)Bay City-Just in time for the "River Roar", the Bay County Health Department say E-Coli bacteria levels continue to drop in the Saginaw River.

Officials have been testing the river since a huge sewage spill occurred in Flint two weeks ago.

The bacteria levels never reached the point where it could be considered dangerous, but the Health Department was telling people to avoid any unnecessary contact with the river until the sewage drifted out to Saginaw Bay.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), June 24, 1999.

* * * 19990624 Thursday

Roland,

Was this sewage spill ever tied to Y2K treatment system testing?

Regards, Bob Mangus

* * *

-- Robert Mangus (rmangus@hotmail.com), June 24, 1999.

Not that I have been able to find...still poking around.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), June 24, 1999.

Blame it on "Backhoe Bob", not Y2K :-)

R. *********************************************************************************

Contractor never warned about sewer

Tuesday, June 22, 1999

By Ron Fonger JOURNAL STAFF WRITER ------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLINT - The city never warned a contractor of the location of a sewer line that later was ruptured, resulting in millions of gallons of raw sewage being poured into the Flint River.

City Administrator David H. Ready said the 72-inch line had not been marked off with stakes because of other demands on the city's Department of Public Works. A break in that line resulted in the dumping of 22 million gallons of sewage into the river on June 10 through 12,

Ready confirmed that the city was contacted in advance by Miss Dig, an agency that works with utility companies and municipalities to provide pre-digging information.

State officials have called the city's dumping of the sewage - done to avoid sewer backups after the line was crushed - one of the worst contaminations of the Flint River in the 1990s.

State Department of Environmental Quality officials were mum on what the city's failure to mark its sewer line would mean to its liability as the agency considers a fine of up to $75,000 for the incident.

A decision on the penalty could be reached within two weeks, and Ready has said the city will dispute any fine that it might receive. He blamed the contractor whose employee hit the sewer line while digging a trench in Flint Township between I-75 and River Forest Apartments.

Ready said that given the lack of markings, the contractor should have held up the work until contacting the city about whether a sewage line was present.

"It's like a pilot sitting on the runway, waiting for clearance (and) deciding, 'I'm tired of waiting. I'm going to take off anyway,' " he said. "If it's not marked, ... they can contact the city. ... They know there's something there."

But Bob Woods, office manager of Roese Contracting Co. of Kawkawlin, said there was no indication of a sewer line in the area. He said the company did everything it could before starting work, including contacting Miss Dig three times about the project, most recently on June 3.

State law requires that utilities be notified three full working days before any such project begins.

"We did everything in our power. I don't know what else we could do," Woods said. "There was no indication there was anything there."

Ready said the city usually responds to notices from Miss Dig but had yet to mark the sewer line because of the demands on water and sewer employees as they work with General Motors on construction of the new L6 engine plant at the Van Slyke Road complex.

Jennifer Wittenstrom, a spokeswoman for Miss Dig's Pontiac office, said the agency tells diggers that utilities are typically marked three days after it receives notice.

Wittenstrom said that if contractors are aware of utilities in the area and do not see them marked, they should return to Miss Dig, which will transmit the notice again.

Woods said there were no outward signs indicating that the line was in the public right of way.

DEQ officials said Monday that they have not completed their investigation into the spill.

Ron Fonger covers government in Flint and Genesee County, and Bishop Airport. He can be reached at (810) 766-6317.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), June 24, 1999.

Sounds like the city didn't process the "one call" request for permission to dig; the contractor busted the 6 foot diameter pipe (yechhhhhh!) and then the city had to (manually) dump raw sewage to avoid flooding from the pipe. (Have to fix it somehow people!)

Lawyers anyone? It's not a Y2K failure - but indicates that remote controls and system monitoring are needed - all the time, regardless of the time of year.

Now, picture next year - two scenarioes: one, the city can't operate the cutoff valve remotely and so the local piping break and spill is made worse for longer periods of time; or two, the cutoff valve is "accidently" operted remotely because of computer glitch and so the overflow spill int to he river is started - like at Van Nyes in CA.

Either way, more sewage spills into downstream drinkning water supplies.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), June 24, 1999.

Raw sewage overflows are common enough in areas where there is a "combined" sewer system that handles both sewage and stormwater drainage (like Boston, Portland, and some other cities). Very large storms have meant that the beaches along Boston Harbor have been officially closed. The resultant algal blooms in the bay can be quite spectacular.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), June 24, 1999.

I thought it was in LA. Here's the article I saw:

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has privately expressed his growing concern over the Y2K bug after a test at one of the city's utility systems resulted in failure, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Publicly, Riordan has been offering nothing but assurances that the city's Y2K problems will be addressed.

The latest problem occurred early on Thursday morning, during a Y2K test of the emergency system at a city sanitation plant. A computer failure ended up pushing more than 4 million gallons of hazardous sewage into a nearby park -- a park the city was considering for an official Millennium New Year's Eve celebration!

Officials at the Donald Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in the city's San Fernando Valley had been testing a computer backup system, recreating a Y2K power outage, when something went terribly wrong. A park ranger was first to spot raw sewage gushing up from a manhole at nearby Woodley Park.

http:/ /www.cbs2.com/news/stories/news-990617-081237.html

-- Chuck (robertsc@accn.org), June 24, 1999.

Chuck, you are wonderful. I've been hunting all over the web looking for that article (Lycos is the pits) on the California y2k screw up since my dad told me he heard a blip about it on the radio over the weekend. Thank you thank you thank you.

Jeannie

-- jhollander (hollander@ij.net), June 24, 1999.

A recent telephone outage here was caused by some benighted individual with a backhoe (on antoher island). My wife thought it was Y2K at first... It seems as if backhoes are more dangerous than Y2K. I wonder how we could remediate them...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), June 25, 1999.