Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
No. 72
Monday, April 15, 2002 Page A-10
ISSN 1521-9402
News
Security
Protocols Should Be Developed to Address Other Possible Terrorist Threats,
Officials Say
Federal agencies, water utilities, and other entities dealing with critical
infrastructure should develop new protocols built on those created in the wake
of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to address possible future crises, a
wastewater treatment official said April 12.
Protocols are being developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, for
example, on how to handle contaminated water from the cleanup of the anthrax
attacks in Washington, D.C., and other areas, Alexandra Dunn, general counsel
for the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, said. She spoke at an
American Bar Association forum on "Combatting Terrorism in the Environmental
Trenches."
About 10,000 gallons of wastewater was generated from the cleanup of anthrax
contamination at the Hart Senate Office Building and two sites in Florida and is
being stored in barrels, she said. Publicly owned treatment works need to
address how to treat this wastewater as well as deal with the public perception
involved with this process and other issues that arose from the terrorist
attacks in the fall of 2001, she said.
Preliminary scientific study has shown that treating this contaminated water
with a water-based solution containing 1 percent chlorine for one hour has been
effective. In Boca Raton, Fla., where a building housing the offices of American
Media Inc. was hit by an anthrax attack, the city authorized EPA to use this
procedure before the wastewater was sent to a treatment plant, Dunn said.
However, other localities have opted to wait until government protocols for
treating this wastewater are in place, Dunn said.
Now agencies should develop protocols to address other possible bioterrorism
scares, she said.
"Let's try to develop protocols in a non-crisis atmosphere," she said.
Moreover, developing such protocols may be easier now that precedent has been
set and a legal and regulatory structure is in place, she said.
Valuable Lessons
The experience of Sept. 11 and the anthrax scare taught valuable lessons that
can inform the response to future possible attacks. For example, Dunn said, "we
don't only have the precedent and regulatory structure in place, we know who the
people are" and the roles they play in certain crisis situations.
She said any protocols developed at the federal level, however, should provide a
balance that allows for decisions to be made at the local level.
Marianne Lamont Horinko, the EPA assistant administrator for solid waste and
emergency response, said the anthrax attack "really threw us off" and challenged
how the agency responds quickly to such an unforeseen event.
One of the challenges was that the agency knew of no pesticide registered under
the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act that could be used on
anthrax. So instead, the agency had to use a Section 18 crisis management
exemption to move forward with the chlorine dioxide treatment that was used in
the Hart building.
The agency also had to develop a treatment "regime with robust sampling" and
develop building clearance procedures. In addition, finding contractors to work
on the cleanup was difficult. The Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liability Act has procedures to indemnify contractors involved
in the cleanup of contaminated sites.
However, Horinko said those procedures need to be "beefed up."
While many contamination cleanups take months, Horinko said, this particular
case involved the cleanup of a building that was home to 50 senators who kept
pressure on the agency to complete the job. The cleanup was made even more
challenging because the building contains "priceless artwork," and the agency
had to find art curators who had to go in before the cleanup began to make sure
the artwork was adequately protected.
Dunn said publicly owned treatment works and other utilities should do
vulnerability assessments on their facilities. However, they need to be aware of
state sunshine laws, which she said are often very broad, and ensure that these
assessments do not become public.
Utilities may need to advocate for changes in state laws to ensure that such
assessments are exempt from sunshine statutes, she said.
"Precedent shows that these are exactly what's supposed to be protected," she
said.
By Susan Bruninga