Is our water supply
safe?
As a member of the water board of a
small water district west of Denver, Colorado, I feel
safe from the threat of terrorism to our water supply.
Our water district serves approximately 1,200 customers
with 500 taps. We do not have any large commercial
customers, hospitals, industrial complexes or other
potential targets of terrorism. Our largest concern has
been the prolonged drought, which is in its fifth year.
We have five board members, an administrator and a water
treatment plant operator.
Our district is located far from
either the west coast or east coast, long known to be
potential targets of terrorism. We are not connected to
any other water supply system, such as the much larger
City and County of Denver Water System operated by the
Denver Water Board. We are one of an estimated 40,000
community water systems (CWS) in the United States, as
defined by the Environmental Protection Agency, which
serve between 25 and 3,300 customers.
Part of the response to the
September 11, 2001 attacks was the Public Health
Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act
of 2002, otherwise known as “the Bioterrorism Act.” This
act required water suppliers to conduct Vulnerability
Assessments (VA) and update Emergency Response Plans
(ERP) to take into account the findings of the
Vulnerability Assessments. It was applied to water
suppliers with 3,300 customers and above. Specific dates
were given for the certification of the completion of
these reports to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Guidelines for Vulnerability
Assessments and Emergency Response Plans have been
defined by the Environmental Protections Agency,
Department of Homeland Security, American Water Works
Association and others. While these guidelines are very
good, they seem far too complex and extensive for our
small water system (as they were defined for far larger
systems). The resource requirements seem to be beyond
the scope of those available to our small district and
its customers. Even though we have a long delivery
pipeline (12 miles), and three reservoirs, our system is
relatively straightforward and simple as water systems
go. Why would any self-respecting terrorist bother with
us as a target?
However, incidents like Walkerton
come to mind. In May 2000 the municipal water system of
Walkerton, Ontario, Canada had an E. coli outbreak, due
to well contamination from surface water. This system
served about 5,000 customers. 2,600 people got sick and
10 deaths occurred in a period of a few days. This
outbreak, even though it was apparently due to operator
error, had very significant impact on the town’s water
supply and water customers. Even four years later there
is a mistrust of the water system. One resident notes,
“When I turn on the tap, I will always wonder if it is
safe.” Many of the residents of Walkerton still suffer
the psychological trauma of the event.
An incident in Pakistan in spring
2004 gives another idea of what can happen when a water
supply is contaminated biologically or chemically. Nine
people died, and 1,600 were sickened by the water supply
originating out of a large reservoir. The water supply
customers physically attacked those in charge of
supplying the water. The exact source of the
contamination is not known.
With the media so prevalent,
persuasive and influential in our lives and society, the
news of a problem with a water supply, especially one
producing illness or death, will be publicized. As in
the Walkerton incident, this publicity will prompt
concern and in some cases panic. When Walkerton happened
the September 11, 2001 attacks had not yet occurred, so
terrorism was not yet thought about to any large extent,
if at all.
What would happen today, if another
Walkerton tragedy were to occur? I suspect that one of
the first thoughts would be that it was caused by a
terrorist attack. The coverage of the Blackout of 2002
was a good example. The media did its best to discount
the idea of terrorism, but it still was one of the first
things that most of us thought about.
Say, for example, a number of
people suddenly become ill and die in a small community
in Kansas. The source of the illness is not immediately
known but the water supply is suspected. The number of
illnesses and deaths increase steadily over the next
week or two. The news media picks up the story. The
small community has a very hard time coping with the
increasing publicity and media coverage. The Emergency
Response Plan is several years old and does not take
into account changes and upgrades in the water system.
They have not done a vulnerability assessment, and it
turns out that several of the key components of the
water system were not even locked or secured. As a
variety of local, state and federal health agencies try
to determine the source of the problem and come up with
an effective solution, answers are still elusive.
Several people involved with the water system, as well
as the local town government and the local town police
force, respond to the media with differing information
and replies. Adjacent communities are clearly uneasy
about the situation and may give their own fact
scenarios and suppositions to the media.
Because this involves a possible
“terrorist” incident, local, state and federal law
enforcement agencies become involved. This may well
become a federal crime scene until proven conclusively
otherwise. The analysis of water samples and disease
cultures from victims need to be “certified” by specific
labs approved by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
and Homeland Security.
This also adds a layer of security
on top of the local law enforcement jurisdiction.
Communications that might be okay to release to the
media and the public under local law enforcement
guidelines may not be okay under federal or state
guidelines. While an incident command post will probably
be set up early into the event, it may appear to be very
confused or chaotic for several hours or even days into
the event. The sheer amount of information that needs to
be processed and organized may come from many different
sources such as the local law enforcement agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Health
Department, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and
the Department of Homeland Security. All of these
agencies may well have different requirements on how to
handle a crime scene, public information releases and
the media. One of the first problems may be to establish
the “pecking” order of the local incident command
center.
The information that does get out
to the media and the public will probably be technical
in nature. Chemical, radiological or biological
incidents all involve scientific and/or medical
information. All three of these incident types are also
affected by the environment into which they are
released. For example, the local weather has a dramatic
impact on the incident. While the local weather forecast
on the news seems simple, there is a lot of information
and data that is collected, analyzed and condensed for
presentation in a short period of time.
The situation at the site of the
incident can change sometimes on a minute to minute
basis. Temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind and
atmospheric pressure all can have an impact on the scene
of the incident. An incident like the one hypothesized
above may well involve significantly more complex data
than that of the September 11 attacks.
Another problem with any of these
three types of incidents is containment. For example,
how many people left the area prior to the establishment
of a site perimeter? Where did these people go? How far
should the containment perimeter extend. Since a
terrorist incident involving one or more of these three
types may not be ruled out for a significant period of
time, the containment may need to be expanded outside
the service area of the local water supplier affected.
This would be especially true if other people using
different water sources also fell ill or died.
As we found out in the September
11, 2001 attacks, the information that got out to the
media and the public was very confusing to the listener.
New information came in sporadically that changed and
often contradicted the information presented just a
short time before. This attack took on “a life of its
own.” America was “glued to its television set.” Rumors
abounded, multiplied and spread like wildfire. Several
months passed before we began to understand the scope
and magnitude of the incident.
As I noted in my book
Understanding Water and Terrorism, most Americans
get their news from television. According to a poll of
1,000 adults between August 5, 2003 and August 11, 2003,
57% said they would turn to television first to receive
information. Fifteen percent would turn to radio first.
Nearly 25% would like to have a warning system created
for wireless phones and pagers. Nearly 18% would like
alerts via email.
The technology for notifying people
of an incident via cell phones, pagers, email and the
internet does exist. However, it is expensive and
requires more technical resources than most small water
suppliers in the United States can afford. So how do
small water suppliers notify customers about an
incident? Phone notification is probably the most common
method. However, as with our water district of 1,200
customers, it would take our administrator quite awhile
to notify everyone. Then there is the problem of people
not being at home or near a phone. At our last board
meeting, we discussed the idea of getting the email
addresses of our customers and implementing an emergency
notification program, in addition to the existing phone
notification plan.
Water suppliers, large and small,
across the United States and in other countries around
the world are asking questions like;
“How would we respond to a major
incident involving our water supply system and our
customers? How would the rest of the United States
react, given the media coverage? How safe are we?”
While we in the United States have
one of the safest water supply systems in the world,
these systems are vulnerable to attack. Many dedicated
people are working very hard to prevent any incident
involving the public water supply. If an incident
involving a water supply system occurred, what would
happen if a known representative of a terrorist
organization claimed responsibility?
One thing that many water suppliers
agree upon is the concept of a better educated consumer.
The better educated the water customer, the easier it is
to resolve any crisis, (whether with a problem like the
drought in the western United States or an incident
involving a contaminated water supply). For our safety,
public education about our water system and supply is
almost a requirement for most small and medium sized
water suppliers in the United States. As noted in an
American Water Works Association report,
“In many cities and small towns,
the public is the first line of defense, serving as an
extra set of eyes watching over key utility assets such
as tanks, reservoirs and even fire hydrants.”
H. Court Young
© 2006, H. Court Young
is the author of Understanding Water and Terrorism.
He is a writer, author and publisher writing about
water, security and terrorism issues. He is also an
eBook publisher with eBooks about meteorites, and World
War II. For more information visit
http://www.tmcco.com |
