Washington Report: Chemical security
Editor's Note: See link below to comment on this article.  | Tommy Holmes
AWWA Legislative Director |
Two House committees are drafting legislation on chemical facility security for introduction in June that would significantly affect drinking water utilities. The current law that established a federal security program for facilities manufacturing, using or storing potentially hazardous chemicals, including chlorine gas, expires at the end of September.
Drinking water and wastewater utilities are currently exempt from such law, but Congress is working to extend the broader chemical facility security program and end that exception. Because the House Committee on Energy and Commerce has primary jurisdiction over drinking water, that committee is drafting a separate title just addressing chemical facility security at drinking water utilities. In brief, the Energy and Commerce draft would require drinking water utilities to develop — and then update every five years — vulnerability assessments, site security plans and emergency response plans. The federal government would develop baseline threat information, risk-based performance standards and risk-based tiers of water systems and designate substances of concern and threshold quantities of substances that would trigger certain regulatory actions. The draft bill also allows states to develop regulations stricter than the federal government's. A key point of contention between the drinking water community and congressional staff the past year has been the issue of "inherently safer technologies (IST)," now titled "methods to reduce the consequences of a chemical release from an intentional act." Utilities placed in the "highest-risk tiers" would have to conduct studies into the use of alternative chemicals or technologies, which are perceived as "safer." Early drafts of the bill would have authorized the US Environmental Protection Agency to mandate process or chemical changes, such as elimination of chlorine gas for disinfection and the use of alternative disinfection methods, such as the use of sodium hypochlorite or on-site chlorine generation. Congressional staff has said the primary chemical they are targeting is gaseous chlorine. AWWA strongly believes that the choice of chemicals or processes should remain a local decision because the choice of disinfectants is based on local water chemistry, local environmental factors, the targeted pathogens, plant worker safety and similar factors. AWWA members and staff have discussed this issue with members of Congress during the AWWA Fly-In in April and with their staffs. A Water Industry Technical Action Fund report, Selecting Disinfectants in a Security-Conscious Environment, to help utilities make disinfection choices will be released soon and can be ordered now. House Energy and Commerce staff has offered a compromise in its latest draft that would leave the final decision as to whether a utility must switch to a different chemical or technology with state drinking water regulators. If a state agency does not make any determination, USEPA can, in 30 days after notifying the state, step in and make such a requirement. AWWA and its Water Utility Council are reviewing this proposed change. Another issue under discussion is jurisdiction. In the House, drinking water is under the Energy and Commerce Committee; however, wastewater issues are under the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the broader issue of chemical security is under the Homeland Security Committee. The chemical facility security bill Homeland Security staff is drafting now puts security regulation for chemical plants and wastewater facilities under the Department of Homeland Security. Members of the water community have pointed out to Congress that as a result, a municipality that owns both a drinking water and a wastewater utility would have to comply with two different sets of regulations for two different agencies. Consequently, Homeland Security staff had been working on legislative language that would allow both entities to come under USEPA security rules if the utilities were "co-located." Water association staff pointed out that drinking water and wastewater utilities are not typically adjacent to each other, so congressional staff is now working on language to allow jurisdiction for utilities under USEPA if the utilities are "co-owned" by one municipality. One clear-cut improvement over previous versions of chemical security legislation is that there is no mention of federal shutdown authority over a drinking water utility in the legislation that Energy and Commerce staff is now writing. Another improvement is in the protection of sensitive information. At the urging of AWWA and other associations, the draft bill exempts vulnerability assessments, site security plans and studies of alternative chemicals and technologies from Freedom of Information Act requests and from similar state or local laws. Tommy Holmes, AWWA Legislative Director,
Washington, D.C.
Posted: 05/26/2009
Comments
| 
