Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 53
Part II
Project Evaluation
OCR for page 54
A Review of the EPA Water Security Research and
Technical Support Action Plan:
Part 2. Project Evaluation
Pane] on Water System Secunty Research
Water Science ant! Technology Board
Division on Earth ant! Life Studies
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
OF THE NATIONAl ACADEMIES
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, D.C.
www.nap.edu
OCR for page 55
Executive Summary
In the United States there is a new heightener! concern regarding the vuInerabilities of
critical infrastructures, including the public water systems, to a deliberate terrorist attack,
and the potential consequences. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
holds lead responsibility for protecting the nation's water systems ant! is currently
working with other federal, state, and local government agencies, water and wastewater
utilities, and professional associations to improve water security. To support these
responsibilities, the EPA developed the Water Security Research and Technical Support
Action Plan (Action Plan), which identifies security issues for drinking water and
wastewater, outlines research and technical support needs within these issues, and
presents a prioritized list of projects to address these needs.
The National Research Council (NRC) was tasked to review the Action Plan. The
NRC's Water Science and Technology Board organized the Pane] on Water System
Security Research to undertake this project. This report focuses specifically on the
panel's Statement of Task questions #2 and #3, listed in bold below:
Has the Action Plan completely and accurately identified important issues and
needs in the water security arena? If not, what issues and needs should be added
or removed?
2. Are the needs appropriately sequenced within the issues? If not, what
adjustments are warranted and why?
3. Are the projects recommended for funding in the Action Plan appropriate to
meet the water security needs? Are the projects correctly prioritized and
sequenced? Is the timing of the projects, as identified in the Action Plan
appendix, realistic? If not, what adjustments are warranted and why?
55
OCR for page 56
56
A Review of the EPA Water Security Action Plan
4.
Overall, what changes to the Action Plan are recommended to improve its
presentation in terms of content and structure so as to more clearly convey the
water security research and technical support program that is described?
A review of the water security issues and needs presented in the Action Plan (tasks #1
and #4) was provided in the panel s first report (See Part I).
ORGANIZING PRINICIPLES FOR WATER SECURITY
Prioritization is needed for the EPA to meet urgent needs for water security while
simultaneously preserving a longer-term research strategy and remaining mindful of the
agency s other essential tasks that contribute to public health and security. The basic
organizing principles of the EPA water security research and technical support agenda
should be to emphasize a continuing increase in the effectiveness and efficiency of our
response and recovery capacity while identifying cost-effective preventive or mitigative
countermeasures based on an understanding of the nature and likelihood of potential
threats. Accordingly, the information needed to respond to a water system security event
should be gathered and made available to those who might need it at every step—not just
the final step. The ability to responc! will be a process of successive approximations that
will improve as information and methods improve. Key tasks that have relatively quick
and immediate value should be given higher priority over longer-term projects that, while
worthwhile, compete for human and financial resources.
In support of these organizing principles for water security, the EPA should:
· Develop and implement a specific management plan within the agency for
the water security effort that includes adequate continuing resources and
effective, stable leadership.
.
· Mine existing data for pertinent information and assemble it in an accessible and
immediately useable form.
Develop effective information transfer and two-way communication at the
first stage of project planning.
Prepare research and technical support results for broad dissemination at
the project level.
· Develop continually evolving guidance and integrated response protocols for
utilities and responders in case of a water security emergency.
Determine the value of water security measures.
Consider the funding constraints of the end users in the development and
prioritization of the research and technical support efforts.
REVIEW OF PROJECTS IDENTIFIED IN THE ACTION PLAN
The Action Plan identifies a lengthy and substantive list of research and technical
support projects that, if completed, would support and advance water-security related
prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery activities (see Boxes 3-1 through 3-8 for
complete project listings). In the pane! s first report (see Part A, the general drinking
water and wastewater security needs were evaluated. Chapter 3 of this report presents an
OCR for page 57
Executive Summary
57
evaluation of the research and technical support projects identified in the Action Plan to
meet those water security needs. Because further development of wastewater research
priorities is underway at the EPA, this review focuses primarily on the projects to support
drinking water security needs, with some evaluation of wastewater projects currently
underway. The following summarizes the recommenctect changes In emphasis,
prioritization, and timing suggested for the research and technical support projects
identified in the Action Plan as well as additional proposed projects. A chart highlighting
suggested revisions to the project time lines (including additional recommended projects)
· . - · . .
. .. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .. .. . ..
~7
is provided in Appendix A.
Drinking Water
The projects identified to support the protection of physical and cyber infrastructure
are appropriate to address the needs identified in the Action Plan (section 3.1), but some
revisions are suggested. Overall, the projects identified to support consequence analysis
(3.1.b) need additional refinement to clarify their contribution to the current state of
knowledge. Refinement of the vulnerability assessment methodologies (3.1.a.4) should
be compressed and postponed until the end of the Action Plan life span so that
information resulting from other projects can be incorporated in this analysis. Additional
projects are proposed in support of a fourth need recommended in the panel s first report
(see Part I) to assess the costs and benefits of countermeasures. These additional projects
are of high priority and should be initiated as soon as possible and sequenced
appropriately with the identification of countermeasures.
The prioritization and sequencing of the research projects to meet the needs for
contaminant identification (Action Plan section 3.2) are all considered appropriate, but
recommendations are made to strengthen the projects and focus the EPA on activities that
will provide useful results in a timely manner. In the development of the contaminant
database (3.2.b), the EPA should identify the most relevant criteria to be included in the
database and focus initial data gathering on the highest priority information needed for
response efforts. Where feasible, similar contaminants could be grouped into categories,
thereby minimizing the time and effort required to produce a useful database.
Information for the database should first be sought from existing sources, and the EPA
will need to coordinate with other agencies to fill the remaining critical information gaps
in a longer-term research effort. The scope of the simulant database shouIc! be narrowed
to better address the potential applications for this effort, and guidance should be
developed on the appropriate use of simulants. The EPA should also consider additional
methods to improve accessibility of its databases and carefully evaluate current
restrictions on information access.
Although the prioritization of the contaminant monitoring and analysis projects
(Action Plan section 3.3) is reasonable to meet the needs, recommendations are offered to
improve the projects, and several additional projects are suggested. The analytical
response protocol is an essential task in the Action Plan that should be integrated with
other proposed response protocols and carefully coordinated with related projects. More
emphasis should be given to quality assurance/quality control measures in the projects
concerning methods development, considering the potential impact of false positives and
false negatives. Related monitoring projects should be closely coordinated with the Early
Warning System projects so that monitoring technologies can be evaluated in that
context. A project should be developed to explicitly address sampling protocols for water
security threat scenarios, and additional research is needed to examine the spatial and
OCR for page 58
58
A Review of the EPA Water Security Action Plan
temporal sampling requirements for water security events. Issues of liability and
geographic distribution of laboratories also need to be addressed. It is clear that some of
the projects (e.g., 3.3.b.1 and 3.3.b.5) will not be completed within the three-year time
frame of the Action Plan and may require large financial resources to conduct as
described.
Many of the projects proposec! to address the needs of containment, treatment,
decontamination, and disposal (Action Plan section 3.4) are central to building an
improved recovery capacity.
The two sets of response protocols (3.4.b.1 and 3.4.d[.1)
represent high priority projects and should begin as soon as possible. Early versions of
the protocols may require estimates to fill information gaps, but the refinement of
response protocols should be. considered a continuous effort that proceeds through
successive improvements. Coordination with the other response protocols identified in
the Action Plan and the many other projects which provide the data that inform the
protocols will be essential. The development of a treatment technology document
database (oroiect 3.4.c.~) should be advanced in time to provide treatment Guidance as
N1 _' ~ ~ ~
quickly as possible. Two additional projects are also recommended to support the need
for improved distribution system models: the EPA should conduct a survey of the use of
hydraulic models at water utilities, and additional long-term research is needed to further
enhance the capabilities of distribution system models. Several recommendations are
provided to focus the projects on more reasonable near-term goals and to clarify longer-
term research objectives.
The research projects to meet the drinking water security needs regarding
contingency planning and infrastructure interdepenclencies (Action Plan section 3.5) are
appropriate in their prioritization, timing, and sequencing. Recommendations are offered
to improve the projects, and one additional project is suggested. A review of the
appropriate role and responsibility of customers in preparing for water system
emergencies should be included in the contingency analyses. An analysis of recently
developed water supply technologies should include an assessment of the reliability of
the technologies, ant! the information should be made available as soon as is feasible.
The projects to assess the interdependencies with other infrastructure should utilize
lessons learned from various case studies before evaluating potential contingency
responses, and the benefits and risks of disaggregation or decentralization should also be
considered. In support of the additional research need recommended in the panel's first
report (see Part I), the Action Plan should develop a project to evaluate impacts from
failure of the "human subsystem" and whether there are potential contingencies for such
occurrences.
Several recommendations are made to enhance or expand on the projects identified to
improve the understanding of contamination-related health effects, develop or refine a
risk management framework, and enhance risk communication (Action Plan section 3.6~.
The project to generate an operating procedure for risk assessment and risk management
for water security is essential to decision making and should be accelerated and
coordinated with other response protocols in the Action Plan (3.3.a. 1-2, 3.4.b. 1, 3.4.d(. 1J.
Analyses of acute and chronic health effects and quantitative assessments of potential
exposure should build on existing knowledge in order to provide initial and timely
guidance to utilities and responders. A review of predictive methodologies to assess
toxicology values in absence of experimental data should be accelerated to illuminate
gaps where additional method development work is needed and to clearly define the
limitations of these methods. In the area of risk communication, EPA should emphasize
research that reviews and refines existing communication strategies and explores how
OCR for page 59
Executive Summary
59
tools can be used more effectively, instead of only emphasizing tool development. A
two-phasecl effort is recommended to support the needs of water security: first, focusing
on selecting and refining a risk communication strategy, and second, addressing the
development, testing, and distribution of communication tools. Recommendations are
provided to assist the EPA in planning and implementing an active disease surveillance
network.
Wastewater
Protecting the wastewater systems against attack and precluding the system from
being used as an instrument of attack upon other critical infrastructure are both important
and deserve attention. Yet, the threats potentially posed by an attack on the wastewater
system are different in important ways from those posed by an attack on the drinking
water system, and treatment plant disruptions represent less direct risks to human health
than drinking water system contamination. Because EPA is currently working with
stakeholders to revise project plans for wastewater security, the panel focused its review
on those projects identified in the Action Plan (section 4.0) that are currently ongoing or
slated to begin in 2003. Generally, these projects are appropriate to meet the most
pressing needs for wastewater, focusing primarily on threat assessment, determination of
countermeasures, en c! access control. However, the project to assess technologies for
identifying physical threats and contaminant introduction should be delayed until
vulnerability assessments and threat assessments have been conducted for wastewater
infrastructure, so that the importance of contaminant detection for wastewater security
can be evaluated relative to other proposeci wastewater projects. Several additional topics
are suggested where further research is needed, including management and disposal of
contaminated waste and sludge and the adequacy of plant worker protection to prevent
harm during potential water security attacks.
Implementation
Implementation of the Action Plan involves communicating and disseminating
results, continually assessing ongoing work and emerging needs in the area of water
security, building and sustaining collaborative relationships with other water security
researchers and organizations, determining and articulating the roles and responsibilities
of other organizations and federal agencies conducting the work identified in the Action
Plan, and identifying and securing the fun(ling necessary to support the identified
projects. Overall, the projects identified in the draft Implementation Plan will make
valuable contributions to the implementation effort, with the following suggested
improvements.
Effective and broad collaboration with other water security experts is essential to the
, ~
. , An, . - · . · . . - . . . . · ~
success of the Action Plan. the distribution system consortium should be expanded
beyond "several federal agencies and AwwaRF" to include expert researchers,
consultants, utilities, and national laboratories. Several projects involve verification of
emerging water-security technologies; these should be selected using cost-benefit
analyses. For projects 5.2.a.2-3, Environmental Technology Verification funds should be
awarded selectively to technologies that are broadly applicable to classes of
chemicals/microbes or that are specific to high-risk, likely threat agents. The
subsidization should be provided for essential devices that would not otherwise be tested
because they have very limited commercial potential.
OCR for page 60
60
~1 Review of the EPA Water Security Action Plan
Developing an effective broad communication strategy that meets the needs of the
wide range of stakeholders, including response organizations, water organizations and
utilities, public health agencies, and the media, while addressing security concerns,
should be among the highest priorities for the EPA. The projects identified in the draft
implementation plan are appropriately prioritized, although some additional components
and separate projects are suggested to strengthen the communication efforts. The project
on how to get the right information to the right people at the right time should be among
the highest priority efforts of the entire Action Plan. Several additional projects are
suggested, including an analysis of the consequences of various levels of information
security, an assessment of the benefits and limitations of existing methods of
dissemination (e.g., web pages, the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center), and
research on means to utilize pertinent information from the community.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
water security
