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U.S. drinking water systems on guard for terrorist attacks
Attempts at cutting off supply more likely than poisoning, experts say
09/25/2001
By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
| TERROR FROM THE LAB | |
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Studies of global terrorism warn about the possible use of lethal chemical or biological weapons, including: |
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| BIOLOGICAL | |
| Anthrax | Bacteria, nerve dioxin |
| Botulin | Poison produced by bacteria, nerve dioxin |
| Yersinia pestis | Bacteria causing bubonic plague |
| CHEMICAL | |
| VX | Powerful nerve dioxin; acts in minutes |
| Mustard gas | Burns lungs, blisters skin, kills relatively slowly |
| - Some substances are easy and cheap to produce yet hard to detect | |
| - Can be scattered easily; some attack not only humans but also the food chain | |
| SOURCE: Die Welt, Jane's, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons | |
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Staff Graphic
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But the nation's 54,000 community water systems are at risk of more mundane attacks: blowing up a pump station or damaging a main to disrupt the supply or disabling a sewage plant to dump raw waste into a lake or river.
Federal officials have repeatedly warned water system managers to increase security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The FBI has not publicly cited any specific threat, but the warnings have addressed conventional assaults on facilities as well as some more exotic risks – perhaps plans to spread chemicals or disease organisms over reservoirs using crop-dusting planes.
Local water utilities have heeded the warnings, beefing up surveillance at treatment plants, dams and other critical points in their systems. All that effort is to ward off a threat that, however unlikely experts might say it is, could have devastating effects on the public's health or psychological welfare.
"Up until Sept. 11, the type of threat most often seen by water systems was vandalism," said Diane VanDe Hei, executive director of the Association of Municipal Water Agencies and a key planner in a nationwide effort to increase security. "But at this point in time, we can't discount anything."
Some aspects of the nation's drinking water system help to assure safety. Most importantly, there is no one nationwide system; instead, thousands of local utilities are connected by common interests, but generally not by pipes – so a single, centralized attack would not have national consequences, Ms. VanDe Hei said.
Even within a metropolitan area, one city might rely on one reservoir, while another city uses another supply. Those systems, with their different pumping, treating and distributing equipment, provide a sort of built-in backup.
"Local systems are critical to the nation, but they are not linked," said Ms. VanDe Hei. "That's sometimes a problem, but in this case, that's fortunate."
However, most systems also have key points of vulnerability, such as pumping stations or treatment plants. Treatment plants, which provide clean water or filter sewage, often have large stores of chlorine, which could kill people in surrounding neighborhoods if a tank were ruptured.
Many experts believe that an old-fashioned bomb placed at a treatment plant – or a sledgehammer applied to an important valve – is a more likely threat than actual contamination of the water.
"We from time to time have looked at this, and we found that it would take an extraordinary amount of material to poison an entire water supply," said Jim Parks, executive director of the North Texas Municipal Water District, which serves about 1 million people in Collin, Dallas, Rockwall and Kaufman counties. "Going after the water distribution is what we find to be more probable."
The vulnerability of water systems to vandalism or more serious terrorism has received increased attention since 1997, when a federal commission named drinking water as one of eight critical infrastructures. Others are banking and finance, electric power, emergency services, information technology, telecommunications, oil and gas and transportation.
After that finding, President Bill Clinton directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1998 to start work on boosting water system security. By early 2002, planners hope to implement a key result of that effort: a nationwide alert system for water system threats.
The system will tap the FBI and private organizations that do threat assessments to warn water system managers of urgent security concerns. The warnings will go directly to the utilities, cutting out a cumbersome, informal system in place now.
Emergency planners also are finishing a new procedure that utilities can use to determine their own vulnerability to physical attack. And the EPA is working on fixing security holes in water systems' computer operations.
The American Water Works Association, a water utility trade group, plans closed-door workshops on vulnerability assessments and counterterrorism in November.
For now, utilities are using more conventional means to guard their facilities.
"Both the treatment sites and the distribution sites are under more security than normal," said Mr. Parks of the North Texas water district. That means, for example, locking gates that usually are open during the day. The vast network of pipelines and pumps that carry water from treatment plants to people's homes is getting a closer look from police, Mr. Parks said.
Dallas and other water systems have taken similar precautions. "It's heightened security," said Pete Oppel, assistant to Dallas City Manager Ted Benavides. "But it's not an emergency situation."