[Neighbors] Water outage?

[Michael Mcdonald]

I imagine that gas and electricity companies put priority on creating notification systems due to their inherent dangers. The water company, not having such dangers, probably didn’t see the value in that sort of investment. 

Gas, electric and water companies deal with different inherent dangers. Gas leaks, as we saw, can blow up buildings. Additionally, many of our gas appliances use pilots lights that need to be re-lit after the gas has been turned off. Turning the gas back on can also expose customers to some dangers. Old houses may have or had worse issues. I had an old floor heater in my house that didn’t have any safety control valves. If the gas went out I had to turn it off manually. Otherwise the heater would start dumping raw gas as soon as the gas was returned. (Hopefully it would go out the flu.) I replaced it with something safer a few years ago. (Hurray for the Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program.)

Electric lines have similar but different safety concerns. People might expose circuits when the electricity goes out and and the exposed circuits would be dangerous when re-energized. Additionally, equipment like swamp cooler motors will suddenly re-start when the energy comes back and that can be a hazard for people who might be investigating why they stopped. Of course, there’s all the clocks and such that need to be re-adjusted when the power comes back.

When the water goes out and you’re not using it, the effect is more silent than the proverbial tree that falls in the forest where there’s nobody to hear. There’s no effect. Moreover, there’s no after effect if nobody tries to use the water while it’s out. Nothing moved so nothing changed. The only effect is that there’s no water while it’s out. Suddenly stopped showers aside, water outages are more an inconvenience to some than anything else.

I imagine the different notification policies is a sort of sign that the three companies operate as frugally as is safe. To me, that’s a good thing.