Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

16. Grid Down

The collapse of the power grids was a turning point in the Crunch. Before the grid went down, life in the U.S. went on with just the stress of mass inflation. But after grid power disappeared, life changed radically. The Texas grid was the last one to go, just a few days after the eastern and western grids failed in rapid succession.

The cities of Farmington and Bloomfield had power supplied by the Farmington Electric Utility System (FEUS), a local power co-op that had its own production capacity from three natural-gas-fired plants, as well as a hydroelectric plant at the Navajo Dam, on the San Juan River. These provided nearly all of the power needs for their 1,700-square-mile service area. The remainder of their power was purchased from the western grid at wholesale rates. When the western grid collapsed, the FEUS was able to get local power-detached from the main grid-back online within a minute. If it were not for this local production capacity, the cities of the Four Corners region, as well as many farmers and ranchers, would have run out of water. Meanwhile, most other cities in the nation only had a three-day supply of water in the gravity tanks that provided pressure to the municipal lines. When the grid went down, the municipal water systems in those cities failed.

Robie Laine had carefully researched and chosen Bloomfield for relocation, primarily because of its local power generation capacity and agriculture. The communities’ growth in the 1980s and 1990s eventually outstripped the local power production capacity of FEUS. However, by removing daytime service to some industrial customers and begging the local community to take extreme conservation measures-by asking customers to refrain from using electric heaters and to not use electric kitchen ranges during daylight hours-the utility was able to meet local needs. The local public relations ad campaign emphasized: “Save power, so we’ll have water, and save water, so we’ll have power.” That message was heeded by most customers and power consumption dropped by 20 percent.

The other reason that Robie Laine had picked the Bloomfield area was that the region was served by a number of irrigation ditches that ran year-round. These were entirely gravity-fed as diversions from the San Juan River, far upstream to the east. The ditches north of the river were administered by the Bloomfield Irrigation District (BID) and ditches south of the river by the Hammond Ditch Association. The maze of ditches included the Porter Ditch, Citizen’s Ditch, Jacquez Ditch, and the Pumpa De La Sequia. Thanks to fairly reliable rains that kept the Navajo Dam full, and seasonal releases from the dam, the irrigation ditches never went dry.

Throughout the United States, EPA water quality standards instituted in the 1980s and 1990s forced even cities with gravity-fed water systems to install electric pumps for water filtration. Older gravity filters were replaced with new filters that met the 0.3 nephelometer turbidity unit (NTU) standard filters. In most cases, this meant that new filters that were pressurized with electric pumps had to be installed. When the grids went down, many city water utility engineers were reluctant to bypass the pressurized water filtration systems for fear of being fined by the EPA. So people who otherwise would have gravity-fed drinking water available were no better off than those who lived where electrically pumped water from aquifers was the norm. This needlessly turned millions of additional people into refugees.

The San Juan Generating Station, on Navajo tribal land fifteen miles west of Farmington, near the town of Fruitland, was a coal-fired plant with four operating units that together could produce 2,000 megawatts of power, making it one of the biggest coal-fired generating stations in North America. After the western grid failed, the plant’s managers took the plant offline. For the grid to function, nearly all of its production units had to be online: it was essentially an “all or nothing” grid, and the catastrophic grid failure of the Crunch was something that had never been fully anticipated.

In normal operation, the San Juan Generating Station consumed 15,000 tons of coal per day. The plant was the first of several western “mine-mouth” co-located power plants that drew from contiguous deposits of sub-bituminous coal. Much of the coal came directly to the plant by way of a 2,800-yard-long conveyor belt system.

By itself, San Juan could not serve the entire western grid. Efforts to reconstitute the grid were almost comical. Only the hydroelectric plants of the Pacific Northwest and a couple of mine-mouth plants like San Juan stayed online during the reconstitution attempts. All of the smaller plants were off-line, mostly due to lack of workers, many of whom were striking in an attempt to get inflation indexing of their salaries. The nuclear plants all went off-line. Frustratingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to recertify the plants for operation unless a three-day checklist restart procedure with umpteen inspections was strictly followed.

Wholesale payments to the San Juan Generating Station from the power utilities-averaging 2.5 cents per kilowatt/hour-had already become a joke, so the grid collapse was actually a relief to the plant management. With inflation raging, the break-even point for the plant would have been somewhere north of fifty cents per kilowatt/hour in the inflated dollars.

The adjoining coal mine, wholly owned by the Navajo Nation, stayed in operation for just two days after the San Juan Generating Station went offline. This production filled their staging area to capacity: 178,000 tons in open-air piles. It was decided that this coal would be designated a “tribal asset” and that it would be made freely available to “any registered Navajo Nation member, or anyone else who spoke fluent Navajo.” All others had to pay cash. The rate was eventually settled at twenty cents in silver for a pickup load or one dollar in silver for a fifteen-yard dump truck load. Although the coal was inferior to hard anthracite, it sufficed for home heating.

Despite the collapse of the larger power grids, the lights stayed on almost continuously in the Farmington-Bloomfield region because the FEUS had its own generating capacity.

When Lars, Liz, and Kaylee gathered for breakfast one morning in November, they decided to put their preparation in high gear. On three legal pads, they created three priority lists, titled “Urgent,” “Important,” and “Tertiary.”

The “Urgent” list had just four items:

• Alps Prosthetic Skin Lotion (or maybe a safe oilfield goop silicone equivalent that will work with chafing for prosthetic arm?)

• Detailed topo maps—preferably 7?-minute or 15-minute scale; need our local map sheet and the eight contiguous sheets

• Gas lamp mantles—need 20+

• Contact lens saline solution and spare glasses for Kaylee

The “Important” list included:

• More batteries-especially need NiMH rechargeable; prefer later low self-discharge (LSD) type

• Extra chains and spark plug for chainsaw

• Distilled water for battery bank (Can make a solar still, if need be.)

The “Tertiary” list included:

• Tampons

• A LOT MORE salt for preserving meat and attracting deer

• Playing cards

• Books

• More spices

• More kerosene-any extra would be great for barter or charity

• .22 LR ammo for bartering

• Elk hunting calls

The Laines and Kaylee Schmidt were only able to work their way through part of these lists before they ran out of cash. After that, they successfully bartered for a few items, using ammunition and pre-1965 silver coins.