ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: HS Today
14February2011 11:10amEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: In testimony before Congress, the general manager for DC Water related a success story for his agency that underscored both the payoffs and challenges for making use of inherently safer technology and extending chemical facility security laws to water treatment facilities.
Before 9/11, DC Water used chlorine and sulfur dioxide to treat wastewater, George Hawkins told the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology Friday. Those chemicals would have posed a threat to the surrounding community if a terrorist attack on the facility ignited them.
Workers at DC Water's Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Facility could see the smoke from the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, which prompted the agency to accelerate a plan to switch to treating water with safer chemicals -- sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and sodium bisulfite.
The transition, though successful, cost $16.4 million, Hawkins noted. Moreover, DC Water now pays $2 million annually for the safer chemicals rather than $800,000 annually for the previous more dangerous chemicals.
Republicans have objected to mandating the use of inherently safer technology under the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) in part due to the costs to the chemical industry. Those objections derailed a bill that would have permanently authorized CFATS in the last Congress because it would have required the use of inherently safer technology where possible. (read full report)