Utah Senator Robert Bennett chairs a senate committee looking into the Y2K problem. News specialist John Hollenhorst recently interviewed the Senator about where he feels we stand on the Y2K issue. They addressed utilities, banks, transportation, health care, the fear factor, even rumors about his daughter. Here are some edited excerpts of that interview.

Worry About the Worry

Hollenhorst:
It seems people are starting to worry about the worry more than the computer bug?

Yes. That's fed by ignorance. So, the more we can do in the (senate) committee to give accurate information, use the hearing process to spread that information as widely as possible, the more we can make contributions to the solution to this problem.

Our committee has no legislative authority. We can only recommend, and so there are bills already starting in other committees based on the information we have developed.

Limiting Liability

And the one that congress is focusing on the most right now has to do with limited liability, with respect to lawsuits.

Because the biggest tab, the biggest cost connected with y2k is anticipated to be the legal cost. Anything we can do to hold that down without denying people legitimate redress for legitimate wrongs, is something we ought to try to do.

Hollenhorst:
That implies to me that there are going to be major problems, otherwise the lawyers wouldn't have much to wrestle with.

There will be problems, there's no question. We won't be able to get everything solved. The problem is just too pervasive. It's everywhere, but the problems may be mere inconveniences, or they may be problems that are not crippling but they're fairly serious.

If the lawyers decide to use traditional methods when there are problems, and that is they sue not only for damages but for punitive damages, then you can see the bill go up really high.

Scary or Reassuring?

Hollenhorst:
In a speech of yours a few months ago, you said it was pretty scary stuff you were learning in those (senate committee) hearings, and each hearing scared you a little more. Is that still true, or has your concern tapered off?

The pattern that has emerged in the later hearings is a very interesting one. It can be scary, or it can be reassuring. The larger organizations that come forward and testify are testifying of progress, and are making projections that they will get it solved and they will be on time. And that is very reassuring.

The scary part is that you're not hearing from the smaller people. They don't come forward and you have to sit back and reflect and say, 'Wait a minute, all the good news that we're getting is self-reporting.'

There is no auditing of this. Frankly, we don't have the time or facilities to set up a very careful analysis of what everybody says, and check and double check. And, the people who declined to testify very possibly have a bad story to tell. That's not necessarily the case.

What we've found as we've gone back to some who didn't testify is that they had a good story to tell, and it was their legal department that was saying, 'No we don't want you to go public with this.' So it becomes reassuring again. But the scary part of it really is that the known is beginning to look reassuring, the unknown could still turn around and bite us fairly big time.

How Bad Will It Be?

Hollenhorst:
Does that mean that you, like all of us, even in your position as chairman of this committee, you still don't know if we're facing a catastrophe or a little bump in the road?

I think I can say that we're not facing a catastrophe. I'm telling everybody this is not the end of the world as we know it. And I am not digging up my backyard and putting in a propane tank. I have not bought a generator.

A little bump in the road? I think it will probably be a little bit bigger than a little bump in the road. But again, I don't know.

Delayed Impact

Now, another pattern that is emerging, at least in the industrialized nations, in the U.S., Western Europe, and some specific nations in Asia-- it's likely that the big impact will not come on January 1. It will come January 5 and January 10 and January 20 as things that get through the date change begin to break down and deteriorate because a supplier somewhere down the line couldn't fill an order. And they had ten days worth on hand, and then they can't replenish that. It begins to show up. So we will probably know how big the bump is more around the first of February than the first of January.

One Supplier's Impact on System

Hollenhorst:
Does that imply that even one small peice of the system could cause big trouble throughout the system?

Unless there was an alternative, yes. Let's take, for example, a huge manufacturer like General Motors. GM has a network of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of outside suppliers. GM does not manufacture everything itself.

Alternatives Needed

Pick an item-- a hood ornament. It's not essential, but it's in the mix. And that hood ornament goes on as the car goes down the assembly line. Assume that because hood ornaments are not that big of deal for a particular model, they have only one or two suppliers, and assume that those are relatively small. So that whole assembly line in theory could shut down if a small supplier of hood ornaments for that model didn't come through.

However, GM might say okay call up somebody who makes hood ornaments for Chevrolet and ask, 'Can you, on a rush basis, fill this in?' And the shutdown only lasts a day or two.

So until you know what the alternatives are, and where people can go to work their way around the problem, we really don't know how powerful the problem will be.

Power

Hollenhorst:
You talked about ten priorities. You started your list with utilities, water and power. Let's talk about that for a moment, both nationally and in Utah. Do you have serious worries there?

Nationally, my concern about a power grid failure has fallen now into the single digits. At one point I thought there was a 40 percent chance we'd have a problem. I'm now down to less than 10 percent.

There still is a high probability that in some areas of the country, and I can't tell you which ones, there could be a local failure. A small or rural electric entity could have a problem. But I don't think the power grid nationally will fail.

Water

Water, again the big systems-- we held a hearing in Los Angeles with Water and Power, I think they're going to be fine. I've talked to Mayor Corradini in Salt Lake and she assures me they are very much on top of it.

Going Manual

Hollenhorst:
You feel comfortable with those local assurances?

Yes, I think so. I visited a plant and discovered that going manual in a water purification plant is not as big a challenge as I had previously thought. Going manually simply means getting up from behind your desk, going out to the plant and turning some of the values yourself, whereas right now the computer controls that. Now that means training some more people and keeping them there longer hours at the critical times when the valves need to be checked. But I think utilities will be fine.

Poisoned Water

Hollenhorst
You have been widely quoted recently about some antidote about a possibly fatal condition in a test run. Can you tell that story again?

In a town-- I'm told it's in Utah-- where they ran a simulation, they moved the clocks ahead to see what would happen. And in that particular facility the failure would hit and all of the valves controlling the release of chemicals into the water would fail simultaneously, which would mean all of the chemicals would dump into the water. And if nobody were there watching and taking care of it, it could potentially poison the whole town.

Now, having been to a water facility where a similar type of thing exists, I realize there are a series of backup protections to see that that sort of thing doesn't happen. But it would have to be manned. And, of course, the mere fact that they ran the test and found the problem means they're not going to have the problem. There might be others-- again, I would expect they would be in smaller communities where manpower is a little harder to come by. But I do not expect it would threaten any major metropolitan water systems.

Hollenhorst:
I don't want to dwell too much on this water incident, but are you sure in your own mind that that's an accurate story, that that really did happen? There are some who have questioned that kind of thing.

I think they're right to question the suggestion of Super Villian doing something with the water supply. They're right to question the seriousness of it. But I don't think they're right to question the idea that it is technically accurate. Given a set of circumstances, the Y2k problem could in fact cause poison to go into the water supply.

Telecommunication

Hollenhorst:
Telecommunication. Why is that a worry and where are we on it?

It's a worry because all business is done over the telephone, and the power lines wouldn't work if the phones went down, because many of the signals that control the distribution of power over the power grid go over telephone lines. Now many of the larger power companies have their own dedicated lines separate from the phone lines, just because they don't want to be as dependent on telephone systems as other businesses are.

Hollenhorst:
Do you think we're in good shape nationally and locally?

I think we are. Again, if the telephone system fails, the banking system will fail, because information goes over the fed wire into the fed reserve system, controls all of the nation's check clearing, and it's all over the telephone system. So that's why I put it second only to power itself (on the priority list).

Big Systems Won't Collapse

Hollenhorst:
Fundamentally you'd think that we're looking at minor stuff?

Yes. I think we're looking at some small phone companies, there are myriad of phone companies throughout the country. And I think the chances that there will be a glitch in one of them are very high. But the idea that the whole phone system will collapse, no I don't think that.