The events of September 11, 2001 heightened concerns regarding the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures, including the nation’s water systems, to deliberate attack. The Environmental Protection Agency holds lead responsibility for protecting U.S. water systems, and in support of these responsibilities, the EPA developed the Water Security Research and Technical Support Action Plan. This 2004 report from the WSTB reviews the EPA Action Plan.

The report recognizes the need to act quickly to address issues of water security and concludes that the EPA strategy to emphasize research and technical support projects that have immediate usability is a sound one. However, the Action Plan would be strengthened if it more clearly presented how the projects contribute to improving the nation’s water security (for an example, see Figure 2). The report encourages the EPA to include plans for integrating the results of the Action Plan into a comprehensive preparedness and response guidance document, which would direct a utility through available prevention strategies, information resources, communication planning, and response and recovery actions.

The report recommends that the EPA water security efforts emphasize continually improving the response and recovery capacity while also identifying cost-effective preventive or mitigative countermeasures. The ability to respond to a water security event will require a process of successive approximations that will gradually improve as information and methods improve. The report advocates that key tasks that have relatively quick and immediate value should be given higher priority over longer-term projects.

There are many health-related issues related to the security of the nation’s wastewater plants, since many surface water supplies for drinking water contain treated wastewater. The wastewater collection system also serves as a potential conduit to damage numerous structures in a region. Thus, the report concludes that it is appropriate to give consideration to the security of the nation’s wastewater systems, although the human health consequences may be somewhat more indirect than in the case of drinking water systems. Nevertheless, the Action Plan contains considerably less information on the security of the wastewater infrastructure than on drinking water systems. The report suggests that more thought should be given to the wastewater systems security and the interdependencies between drinking water and wastewater systems. The report concludes that ongoing wastewater security projects are appropriate to meet the most pressing needs for wastewater, but several additional projects are suggested, including management and disposal of contaminated waste and sludge and the adequacy of plant worker protection during potential water security attacks.