Backflow' water-line attack feared

[Dave Emery]

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            'Backflow' water-line attack feared 
           
            Terrorists could reverse flow in system to introduce toxins 
           
            By Yochi J. Dreazen
            THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 
           
            Dec. 27 - In St. Petersburg, Fla., water authorities are
keeping a closer eye on system-wide water pressure. In Cleveland,
officials are weighing whether to add more chlorine to their water so
larger amounts of the chemical will linger in their pipes. In Portland,
Ore., alarms are now triggered by smaller drops in water pressure than
in the past. 
     
             ACROSS THE COUNTRY, water utility officials are taking
steps to prevent terrorists from reversing the flow of water into a home
or business - which can be accomplished with a vacuum cleaner or bicycle
pump - and using the resulting "backflow" to push poisons into a local
water-distribution system. Such an attack would use utility pipes for
the opposite of their intended purpose: Instead of carrying water out of
a tap, the pipes would spread toxins to nearby homes or businesses.

             Water utility officials say the backflow threat dominates
their post-Sept. 11 discussions with law-enforcement personnel. Although
utilities have posted extra guards to patrol reservoirs and treatment
plants, officials say the biggest threat to the nation's water supply
may be from the pipes that carry the water, not facilities that store or
purify it.   

             "There's no question that the distribution system is the
most vulnerable spot we have," says John Sullivan, chief engineer for
the Boston Water & Sewer Commission and president of the Association of
Metropolitan Water Agencies. "Our reservoirs are really well protected.
Our water-treatment plants can be surrounded by cops and guards. But if
there's an intentional attempt to create a backflow, there's no way to
totally prevent it."

             Most reservoirs hold between three million and 30 million
gallons of water, which would dilute any poison so significantly that
terrorists would have to release enormous quantities to do serious
damage. And most poison would be destroyed when the water was purified
at a treatment plant. A backflow attack, by contrast, could spread
highly concentrated amounts of poison to a few thousand homes or
businesses, making the toxin far more effective.   
     
             So far, the only backflow incidents on record have been
accidental. Four years ago, dozens of gallons of fire-fighting foam
backed up through the hoses of firefighters in Charlotte, N.C., and made
its way into the city's water system, prompting officials to order
thousands of residents not to shower or drink tap water for several
days. In 1998, workers at a United Technologies Corp. Sikorsky
helicopter plant in Bridgeport, Conn., added chemicals to the facility's
fire prevention system to guard against corrosion. Some of the chemicals
backed into the town's water system, deluging area homes with
contaminated water that residents were told not to drink or use for
washing or bathing.  
           
            There were no serious injuries in either case, but the
incidents rattled many water officials. Even before the Sept. 11
attacks, fears of an accidental backflow incident led to the creation of
a group called the American Backflow Prevention Association
(www.abpa.org), which works with lawmakers, water officials and
engineers across the country. The group publishes a newsletter and an
educational comic book for children that features a character named
Buster Backflow.   
     
     
        
                  Down the pipes?   
                      
                 The federal government devotes little money to
protecting the nation's water supply system, which many law enforcement
officials see as a potential terrorist target.   

                   Amount of money spent by the Environmental Protection
Agency to combat bioterrorism in fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2001: $2.5
million (the agency spent $10,000 on the issue in 1998, no money on it
in 1999, and $100,000 in 2000). 

                       Amount that municipal and private water-system
officials wanted to see the agency spend on the issue in the current
fiscal year: $155 million. 

                       Amount the EPA will spend in the current fiscal
year, according to recently passed emergency spending legislation: $90.3
million. 

                       Total amount of money that water-system officials
want Congress to devote to improving drinking-water and wastewater
plants: $5 billion. 

                       Total number of municipal water systems across
the country: 54,064. 

                       Total number of Americans served by the systems:
263.9 million. 

                       Amount water systems would receive for immediate
security projects, according to a just passed Senate bill: $50 million. 
                  
           Sources: EPA, American Water Works Association, WSJ research 
            

             Still, experts have long feared that a terrorist would try
an intentional attack. As Gay Porter DeNileon - a journalist who serves
on the National Critical Infrastructure Protection Advisory Group, a
water-industry organization - put it in the May issue of the journal of
the American Water Works Association, "One sociopath who understands
hydraulics and has access to a drum of toxic chemicals could inflict
serious damage pretty quickly."   
     
             Utility officials say that it is difficult to fully prevent
a backflow incident, but they are hopeful that they can limit the damage
through early detection. The beginning of a backflow attack probably
would be marked by a sudden drop in water pressure in a targeted
neighborhood as terrorists stopped the flow of water into a home or
business. The pressure would then climb as attackers reversed the flow
of water and began using it to carry poison.

             Utilities regularly monitor system-wide water pressure,
because a sharp and unanticipated decrease - at times other than, say,
halftime of the Super Bowl, when tens of millions of American toilets
flush - can indicate that a pipe has burst. Most utilities monitor
pressure at water-treatment plants and inside the underground pipes that
carry the water to nearby homes and businesses; some use advanced
telemetric sensors inside pipes.

             In recent weeks, many utilities say they have increased the
frequency of their checks. "A small drop-off would attract attention it
wouldn't have even a short time ago," says Michelle Clements, a
spokeswoman for Oregon's Portland Water District, which serves 190,000
customers.

             But officials concede that it might be difficult for them
to actually spot the minor drop in pressure that could be the start of a
backflow attack. Jeffrey Danneels, who specializes in infrastructure
security at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, says that water
officials might have a hard time detecting a backflow attack originating
in a single home or apartment building. "The smaller the pipe, the
harder it would be to notice," he says.   
     
             Another way to protect the public is to increase the
amounts of chlorine or other chemicals added to water so that more of
the chemical will remain in the pipes, providing residual protection
against some toxins, according to Tom Curtis, deputy director of the
American Water Works Association, which represents 4,300 public and
private water utilities.

             At the Cleveland Division of Water, officials are
considering adding more chlorine in areas where residual levels are low,
says Julius Ciaccia Jr., Cleveland's water commissioner. Even before the
Sept. 11 attacks, some utilities had begun replacing the chlorine with
chloramine, a related substance made from the combination of chlorine
and ammonia that is believed to linger in pipes longer. Increasing the
chemicals has drawbacks, however. "You can only go so far before people
begin to complain about the taste," says Curtis.   

             The only sure way of preventing a backflow attack, water
officials says, is installing valves to prevent water from flowing back
into the pipes. Many homes have such valves on toilets and boilers. But
virtually none have them on sinks, in part because water officials long
assumed that the biggest threat they faced was natural, such as an
earthquake, flood or hurricane carrying debris into a reservoir or pipe.
Water officials say retrofitting existing structures with the valves
would be prohibitively expensive.

             "We're used to natural incidents. We're ready for them,"
says Sullivan of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies. "But
we've never really looked at what could happen if someone really wanted
to come and get us. And that's a hard adjustment to make."
             
             Copyright ) 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
      All Rights Reserved.
                
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	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die at die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. 
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