U.S. Response:  Administration, Lawmakers Work to Secure Water Supplies

Bush administration officials and U.S. lawmakers are assessing risks and planning ways to distribute funds to secure the country’s water supplies, Greenwire reported today.

The U.S. Office of Homeland Security is devising a list of possible contaminants that terrorists could use to pollute U.S. drinking water supplies, said Janet Pawlukiewicz, director of the Environmental Protection Agency water protection task force (see GSN, March 18).

The security office has been in charge of U.S. efforts to “improve knowledge” of what to expect in the event of a terrorist attack on U.S. water systems, Pawlukiewicz said at a water security seminar last week in Washington.

The EPA also has created a report on the security of U.S. water systems, which has not been seen outside the U.S. government, said Diane Van DeHei, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, a House bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act would provide $170 million for water system vulnerability assessments and an EPA review of U.S. drinking water systems.  U.S. congressional staff members have been meeting in conference committee to work out differences between bills, according to Greenwire.

Even though the Senate version of the bill did not include language on water system security, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Senator Bob Smith (R-N.H.) have said they would bring up the issue of water security during the conference committee’s negotiations.

Jeffords is the lead sponsor of a bill that would create a $60 million grant program for water systems to use new security technologies.  Smith has written a bill that would provide an immediate $50 million for vulnerability assessments.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week approved the Water Quality Financial Act, which would allow states to consider anti-terrorism security measures when allocating federal infrastructure funding of wastewater systems.

So far, Congress has provided about $90 million for water security, according to Greenwire.  The EPA would begin distributing grant applications to eligible utilities in the next few weeks, said EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

The EPA will only be able to provide technical and financial assistance to utilities for water security; the actual “bricks and mortar” are the responsibility of utilities and municipalities themselves, Pawlukiewicz said.

Security vs. Freedom

Utilities are concerned that information, such as vulnerability assessments, could be obtained by terrorists through the Freedom of Information Act, Greenwire reported.

Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) has sponsored a bill that would keep unreleased industry information shared with the government from being accessed by the public, within the FOIA guidelines.  Representatives Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) have sponsored similar legislation in the House.

Utility managers are aware of the right-to-know debate, but they also have the attitude that they will not reveal information unless they are legally required to do so, said Ken Rubin, an Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies representative.  If the public wants certain information released, then they would have to come and ask for it, he said.

“The minute you start talking about it, you create a security breach,” Rubin said (Darren Samuelsohn, Greenwire, March 25).

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U.S. Response:  Senator Wants Better Employee Checks at Nuclear Plants

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not conduct extensive background checks on nuclear power plant employees and does not know how many foreign nationals work at nuclear plants, according to a report released today (see GSN, March 1).

The report, titled “Security Gap:  A Hard Look at the Soft Spots in Our Civilian Nuclear Reactor Security,” was prepared by Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) from an analysis of more than 100 pages of correspondence requested from the NRC.  The report indicated that although the agency does require criminal background checks of nuclear plant employees, the checks are limited to crimes conducted in the United States.

“It is unacceptable that the NRC (does not have) a policy on screening of foreign nationals,” the report said.  “Terrorists may now be employed at nuclear reactors in the U.S. just as terrorists enrolled at flight schools in the U.S.”

Security exercises conducted at nuclear plants are inadequate and the sites that conduct them fail more than half of the time, according to the report.   The NRC waited until six months after the Sep. 11 attacks to increase security at nuclear power plants, the report said, adding that the NRC has “historically failed” to change security regulations and has “yet to begin a permanent revision of security regulations.”

“Black hole after black hole is described and left unaddressed,” Markey said.  “Post 9-11, a nuclear safety agency that does not know — and seems little interested in finding out — the nationality of nuclear reactor workers or the level of resources being spent on security at these sensitive facilities, is not doing its job.”

The NRC has worked hard to ensure that the 103 U.S. operating nuclear reactors are safe, said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

“We think we’ve been very proactive in trying to identify any threats against nuclear power plants,” Sheehan said.  “There are a number of things that have been done and will continue to be done.  We’re not taking any threats against nuclear power plants lightly” (Cheryl Thompson, Washington Post, March 25).

The names of all nuclear plant employees are vetted by the FBI and any criminal records would likely be discovered through the process, said Ralph Beedle, chief nuclear officer for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main lobbying group for the nuclear power industry.

“The people we hire, for the most part, are folks who have come over here and gone through school,” Beedle said.  “I hired a lot of people out of Columbia University, [City College of New York], folks from India, China, that were over here for years as students,” he said, referring to when he was chief of nuclear operations at the New York Power Authority (Matthew Wald, New York Times, March 25).

The NRC also does not know how many security guards are employed at each nuclear plant, Markey said.  NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said nuclear plant security forces are fingerprinted and minimum staffing levels would be included in each plant’s security plan, which is filed with the NRC.

“The security plan would tell you the minimum number, but not necessarily the whole number,” Screnci said.

Screnci also said security tests conducted at nuclear plants are not done on a “pass-fail” basis.  Instead, they are used to find “chinks in the armor,” she said.

Even though the NRC does require background checks, “the scope is somewhat limited” and not enough to assure security at a site where a terrorist attack could be potentially devastating, said Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“I’ve worked in over 20 plants in the 17 years I was in the industry,” Lochbaum said.  “Had I wanted to sabotage the plant, it wouldn’t have been that difficult to do so.”

Although other agencies do not conduct extensive background checks of their employees, “The consequences of someone causing mayhem [at nuclear power plants] are a little more severe than someone working at a 7-11,” Lochbaum said (Susan Milligan, Boston Globe, March 25).

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