Here in Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in North America we alternate from days with shut-down of elevator service with days of hot water shut down with at least one notice that BOTH may go down at one time.
This is to "conserve power". We are one block away from BIG ALLIS part of the electricity generating complex that supplies THIRTY PER CENT of all power to NYC.
At this rate, the entire city could have electricity as reliable as Iraq.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting you mention it ... where I live here in Independence, I am four blocks from the electric generating plant for our town (East Main Street and South Cement Street [so named because the cement plant is at one end of that street] on the eastern edge of town) which is operated by Westar Energy -- the former KG&E operation. When my mother lived in this house seveveral years ago, she would complain "the electricity goes out sometimes, and that seems odd considering how close we are to the power house." But what mother did not understand was that _distance from the power plant_ is not the only criteria; lots of other things come into play as well. It seems pretty reliable to me, although much more expensive than I would like. Electric here costs me during the summer in excess of $150 per month, although I am on the 'average pay plan' which means I wind up paying about $100 per month all year around. We have not had any outages this summer at all; we had a couple of brief ones (about one hour each) last year, and one or two of the same short duration last winter.What I _really miss_ however is when the water went out by accident but that was only once in the time I have lived here -- this past weekend in fact -- and like the electric, there was no advance notice; it was just gone. Friday about 5 PM a main water line under Second Street decided to spring a rather bad leak. The water people say they lost 'several thousand gallons' of water before they could get it shut off (all of the block I live on plus much of South Second Street. I walked down the street through the lake of water to where I saw a couple of trucks which said 'City of Independence Water Works' on the side and asked the men about it. They said their 'best estimate' was several hours needed of work. And it was off 3-4 hours, which is a real pain if you have no water in reserve and only ice cubes in the fridge, and one tank full of toilet water in reserve to be flushed as needed. Anyway, the water guys came to my door about 10 PM Friday night and said "it is going to take us much longer than we expected, so we are going to turn the water on _temporarily_ so everyone can stock up on water to drink and flush their toilets, etc, _then_ after about an hour we are going to cut it off again, so be warned."
True to their word, shortly afterward, the pipes started hissing as air ran out, and a _tiny_ stream of water started running. I filled up several jugs and also the cats' water bowl, etc before it finally dribbled off. Saturday morning I awakened to the sound of a jack hammer and a Catepillar tractor-like scoop shovel digging in the street about a block away. They finished their work around noon, tossed gravel in the giant hole they made, and came by every house to say "sorry for the inconvenience in the 100-degree heat." If the water and the electric had gone off at the same time, that would have been sort of an ugly situation. Our newspaper, the Independence Daily Reporter, told us today in the Sunday paper that a ninety year old section of the main pipe had given out. PAT]