State government and the city of Lansing have a love/hate relationship. While the city loves the money that the state gives to them through taxes and utility services, they hate the fact that most of downtown Lansing is occupied by the state. So, to make the city happy, the state buys water, electric and steam from the city for the downtown campus. And recently, they added chilled water.

Now, the state, here in Lansing, had their own chiller plant which they used for cooling their buildings in the summer time. However, the city decided that they wanted to get into the chilled water business so they came to the state and cut a deal for chilled water. New pipes were run into the buildings and in a few months they were ready to provide the state with chilled water.

It was decided that the best time to switch from state chilled water to city chilled water was on a Saturday. Picking a Saturday would give them 2 whole days to get the new system up an running.

Everything was going just fine during the change over until they missed one minor engineering detail. The plan called for providing the state with chilled water at 10 PSI.  They misread the design and instead provided the state with chilled water at 100 PSI.

Well, needless to say, the system didn’t hold up to the increase in pressure. Up in the penthouse of the building, the pressure valve opened and discharged thousands of gallons of water into penthouse. And, while the penthouse had floor drains, they were not adequate to keep up with the demand that a 24 inch pipe placed on them.

Not only did the water leak under the door and down the stairs, it soon started leaking through every crack and hole in the floor. By the time the city realized that something was wrong, several floors were trashed. Needless to say, it made a big mess.

Did the state save any money on this move? I doubt it.