Highlights
– Terror activity online threatens vast water infrastructure system
– Multi-agency effort continues to develop security guidelines and initiatives
– Security breach incidents highlight the sustained threat to water systems
Covering thousands of miles of aqueducts, pipes, distribution and sewer lines, the US water infrastructure system is a vital component to everyday life. However, protecting the system from vandalism and terror attacks is difficult as it spans across the country and over remote terrain where security surveillance is limited.
A potential threat to these systems was highlighted shortly after 9/11, when officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned of possible attacks to water systems infrastructure. Officials reported suspicious activity that suggested al-Qaeda operatives had attempted to access digital systems at water storage and water supply systems from South Asia and the Middle East.
While risk assessment is an ongoing process for many of the nation’s water facilities, continuous federal inspection efforts ensuring security and safety guidelines are needed to reduce the possibility and lessen the effects of a terrorist attack.
Addressing Initial Weaknesses
The nation’s largest water facilities are mostly found in urban centers, but these systems provide drinking water for more than 75 percent of the population. As a result, these systems are more likely to be targeted for a terrorist attack or contamination plot. Subsequent 9/11, policy makers recognized the potential threat to the nation’s widespread water infrastructure systems and begin pushing through laws and guidelines to protect such systems.
• In June 2002, Congress passed the Bioterrorism Act (Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act). For any water system serving a population size of more than 3,300, laws require each facility to conduct a vulnerability assessment of its systems to a terrorist attack.
• To date, policy makers have passed appropriations of almost $800 million for commercial initiatives set on improving physical security, coordination and research in the water sector.
• Organized by the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2004, drinking water utilities, wastewater utilities, and engineering groups created three universal guideline documents that provide the design for online contaminant monitoring systems and the physical security enhancements of drinking water, wastewater, and storm water infrastructure systems.
Wastewater Systems Step Into Focus
Over 200 of the nation’s wastewater treatment centers have also displayed steady progress in upgrading security and reducing vulnerabilities, according to a Government Accountability Office survey (Source). A significant number of the facilities improved perimeter fencing, identification systems, and more than half conducted vulnerability and security assessments to identify risks. Many of the wastewater facilities responding to the survey claimed to have stopped or planned to stop using chlorine gas for disinfectant purposes. The series of deadly chlorine gas attacks last year in Iraq displayed the chlorine’s potential to inflict mass casualties and widespread psychological fear (Previous Report).
Many facilities are switching to the safer and less costly sodium hypochlorite (bleach) or the more expensive ultraviolet light. However, at least 1,700 drinking water facilities and 1,150 wastewater plants still use chlorine gas as a disinfectant.
• The GAO survey did however highlight that much of the wastewater collection systems have been overlooked largely due to a lack of funding. Possible upgrades could include manhole intrusion sensors, manhole locks, or sensors to detect biochemical threats to the collection systems.
Incidents Highlight Security Lapses
Although reports and surveys have indicated that a large majority of facilities have or are undertaking security upgrades, the following incidents highlight the sustained and potential threat to water systems.
• January 2008: City officials in Nashville, Tennessee uncovered a potential threat to the city’s drinking water. It was reported that security guards working for the city’s Metro Water Services, could hold onto their IDs, keys and company uniforms once leaving the company. One former guard claimed that he could access any water facility months after leaving the company. (Source).
• February 2007: In the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles, authorities found three pipe bombs placed by a valve on the California Aqueduct that supplies water to millions of people in Southern California. If the bombs had detonated, the valve could have been blown off leading to a significant loss of water (Source).
• March 2006: In a small town just south of Boston, residents were ordered to stop using tap water after authorities reported that the area’s supply facility holding a 1.3 million gallon storage tank had been broken into. The intruder cut the facility’s barbed wire and severed electrical lines to an alarm and left behind a container filled with a fowl smelling liquid (Source).
• September 2003: Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has previously threatened to target privatized water supply systems. The group claimed responsibility for the placement of four bottles of flammable liquid at a pump station for Ice Mountain Spring Water Company.
• 2002: The FBI issued an alert warning that al-Qaeda operatives worldwide were conducting Internet research on water storage, supply systems and waste management systems. The Internet searches were often focused on Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, which are used to collect data from sensors that relay the information back to a central computer. (Source)
Outlook
Ensuring effective safety protocols for a broad range of terror and disruption threats will be a long-term challenge for US environmental agencies and individual water facilities, due to the massive size and complexity of the nation’s water infrastructure. Preparing for emerging threats will also require ongoing vulnerability assessments from federal and private levels to fully understand the problem, as terrorists will likely work to develop new tactics of dangerous chemical dispersal and conduct more operations of cyber based espionage of industrial control systems.
