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Transportation
Infrastructure Security: Reassessing Risks
(enr.com 12/06/01)
By Tom Ichniowski and bureaus
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| ALTERNATIVES
Highway over Hoover Dam may become road to nowhere in
the future. (Photo by William G. Krizan for ENR) |
The Sept. 11 terror attacks changed
the way the U.S. and the world views and protects the physical
assets that make a nation what it is in terms of art, culture,
industry and prosperity. The process of securing those assets
from a new level of threat is just getting started with many
new guards and gates but more sophisticated design and construction
aspects will be imbedded in retrofits and new projects as
time goes on.
"Obviously, after 11 September,
we were confronted with an infrastructure protection challenge
in the U.S. that we had not anticipated before," says
Brig. Gen. Robert Griffin, director of civil works for the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, D.C. The Corps
immediately increased its level of protection and surveillance
at its critical facilities and also started "building
a budget" for security needs.
Mike Parker, assistant secretary of
the Army for civil works, said in October that the security
upgrades could cost $267 million in the first year plus $65
million annually after that. Parker also said that the estimate
depends on a Corps security assessment still under way.
Griffin says the Corps wants to put
as many dollars as needed "into the physical characteristics
of the projects we have" to reduce the guard force needed
at those facilities. "If you can leverage technology,
you're better off doing that than buying people, long-term,"
he says.
Prior to Sept. 11, the Corps had wanted
people to visit its facilities. But now, it has to balance
that policy with security. For example, at Buford Dam north
of Atlanta, the Corps closed a state highway that runs over
the dam and later reopened the road after working with the
state. That sort of thing "happened throughout the country,"
Griffin says.
Along with those immediate actions,
the Corps also is surveying its critical facilities to see
what longer-range steps are needed. Those judged critical
represent about 20% of the Corps' approximately 1,500 major
projects. This survey is expected to take about six months.
But what sort of construction will be
required to upgrade security? "I would characterize it
as small-scale," says Griffin. He foresees upgrades or
installation of electronic security systems, and adds, "I
think you will see some barrier work, possibly some rerouting
of some roads."
That view is shared by John W. Keys
III, commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation. The
agency still is at high security at its critical dams, including
Grand Coulee, Shasta, Hoover, Folsom and Glen Canyon. Keys
says the agency is conducting a thorough review of security,
but doing it a little differently. In the past, the agency
tended to look at its dams individually. "Now we're looking
at them in that light and [also] how they fit into the whole"
if there is coordinated action by terrorists, Keys says. He
expects early results in three months.
One big part of the review is information
technology, focusing on the electronic control system for
BuRec powerplants, gates, and other machinery. Keys has no
firm estimate yet. "We're trying to get a handle on it,"
he says, noting that estimates range from $20 million to $30
million a year.
In the longer term, the security issue
is providing new support for bridges to provide alternative
routes to roadways over major dams, which had become bottlenecks.
Keys says Burec is working with the U.S. Dept. of Transportation
and the states of Arizona and Nevada about building a new
bridge near Hoover Dam, for example. "The proposal has
been around for years," he says, with the current schedule
calling for completion in 2007. There are no contracts yet,
not even design. But some people are trying to accelerate
the project, including the governors of Arizona and Nevada,
he says.
In addition. Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.)
in June introduced legislation to get a new bridge near Folsom
Dam in his state. The new bridges "aren't cheap,"
says Keys, noting that the Hoover bridge would approach $100
million and the Folsom project $50 million to $60 million.
Infrastructure security will get a boost
with coordination from a public-private partnership formed
Nov. 20. The Security Infrastructure Partnership includes
key federal agencies, such as the Corps, Naval Facilities
Engineering Command, Federal Emergency Management Commission
and major design and private-sector construction groups (ENR
11/26 p. 7). Hundreds of people already have contacted the
organization, says Dwight Beranek, the Corps' chief of engineering
and construction.
FASTER. One focus is to influence building
codes and standards. Writing those codes and standards "takes
a minimum of five years," he says. "We want to accelerate
that," and maybe cut that time in half. The partnership
wants to collaborate and have security standards and technology
adopted so that it's not just available to the military but
also to commercial construction.
The group would help others develop
a systematic approach to security engineering, how to do a
security assessment and what steps to take to deal with threats.
Beranek believes security is "going to have to be something
that any property developer or owner has on their checklist"
as they do renovations and new construction. "What we
think is going to drive this is insurance premiums,"
he adds.
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| ROCK
STARS Mt. Rushmore (above) has new security. (Photos
courtesy of Black & Veatch) |
Certain private facilities are viewed
as very high risk. The U.S. Coast Guard closed Boston Harbor
for seven weeks after Sept. 11 to ships bringing liquefied
natural gas to Tractebel LNG North America LLC's Distrigas
terminal in Everett, Mass. And fears of sabotage expressed
by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) prompted the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission to order a second look at its own order
to recommission the Williams Cos.' Cove Point LNG terminal
in Lusby, Md. But the fears have not chilled last summer's
budding revival in the LNG market (ENR 8/13 p. 12).
A Lloyd's Register of Shipping risk
and consequence assessment requested by Tractebel reviewed
marine incidents involving LNG carriers and concluded that
the worst likely consequence of a terrorist attack would be
a fire, not an explosion, say Lloyd's officials. Buoyed by
the report, shipments through Boston Harbor resumed Oct. 29.
FERC Chairman Pat Wood III hopes to conclude the Cove Point
case this year.
No such concerns hindered recommissioning
of Houston-based El Paso Corp.'s Elba Island, Ga., LNG terminal.
El Paso is proceeding with plans to expand the terminal's
capacity from 440 million cu ft per day to 800 million by
2005 at a cost of $145 million.
Elsewhere, a 20-person cross-sector
task force at the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo
Alto, Calif., has completed a pair of plans to assess "credible
threats" to the electricity infrastructure by a "knowledgeable
insider," says Karl Stahlkopf, EPRI vice president of
energy delivery systems. The task force is leaving questions
of physical security to the utility companies, which best
know their own needs, he says. A short-term plan to cover
steps to be taken in the next 18 months and a long-term plan
with a five-year horizon have been submitted to the EPRI board
of directors.
Stahlkopf points out that electricity
infrastructure typically is the first target in modern warfare,
citing the military's early attacks on infrastructure in Bosnia,
Iraq and Afghanistan. As important as power may have been
in the more developed of those countries, its loss can be
enormously costly in the U.S. He notes that early-2001 blackouts
in California cost an estimated $100 billion to $300 billion.
"The economic impact is large, the symbolic impact is
very large," he says.
The insecurity owners feel about security
now has prompted many to seek out experts, generating a booming
market for some engineers. Kansas City, Mo.-based Black &
Veatch last year completed a $2.6-million upgrade of electronic
security systems at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. The Windows-nt
based system provides access control, intrusion detection
and closed-circuit television monitoring that is controlled
from a single operating platform. The monument had no central
controls for security beforehand. "Most facility managers
don't know where they stand on security," says David
Dobbins, project manager for Black & Veatch's security
consulting and design services group.
Better safe than sorry also was the
message at a water security meeting held Dec. 3-4 in Hartford.
"Water is the quintessential target, " says Peter
S. Beering, terrorism preparedness coordinator for Indianapolis.
But with water and wastewater agencies requesting billions
of dollars from Congress, sensors, lights, fences and alarms
rather than major hardening construction appears to be the
order of the day.
Congress has taken up the issue and
several bills are now wending their way through the House
and Senate. They include money for short-term physical upgrades
and water research projects to develop tools and techniques
to combat terrorism.
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| TOUGHENED
New guidelines for terminals place a priority on keeping
distances. |
There are 168,000 public water systems
in the U.S. and 16,000 publicly owned treatment works with
over 600,000 miles of sewer lines in service. Most water and
wastewater experts say the sector already was organized and
active thanks to a 1998 presidential directive designating
those facilities as critical infrastructure. "Since 9/11,
we are at a heightened state of alert and the perceived threat
has changed from a disgruntled employee or vandalism to terrorism,"
says Jeffery J. Mosher, director of technical services for
the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.
Terrorist activity in Nicaragua and
Bolivia shows that the greatest vulnerability of water systems
is in the distribution system, says Steven M. Gamelsky, president
of The GEA Group, Nanuet, N.Y. "Contaminants are a lesser
threat because of the natural processes of dilution and decomposition,"
he says.
While many issues affecting transportation
need to be addressed, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta
told state transportation officials that priorities have been
recast dramatically. "DOT stands ready to take the next
step to secure the safety of every mode of transportation,"
he said Dec. 3, at the annual meeting of the American Association
of State Highway and Transportation Officials in Fort Worth,
Texas.
DOT now is putting in place the newly
established Transportation Security Administration. "It
will be larger than the FBI, the DEA and the border patrol
combined," Mineta said.
However, many airport terminal projects
remain suspended as design criteria are reviewed. These include
distances separating terminals from parking structures, a
problem that has appeared at Robert Gray Airport in Killeen,
Texas, for example. The project was designed and bid for construction
prior to Sept. 11, but parking on the original design was
112 ft from the terminal, not the 300 ft now required by the
enhanced security guidelines. A study by engineer Carter &
Burgess, Fort Worth, indicates that using laminated glass
in the terminal and making certain structural changes could
make the terminal safer and leave parking within 172 ft, saving
valuable space.
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