by Rebecca Walker — September 24, 2008—The water sector is set to become the first of the country’s 18 critical infrastructure and key resource sectors to develop a metric and launch a tool to gauge security progress under the National Infrastructure Protection Plan framework.
According to Congressional Quarterly, drinking water and wastewater utilities will be able to access the tool and fill out the 22 questions that comprise the metric this week.
“Those of us in the water sector want to make sure that we are doing the right thing to protect our utilities and to do everything to minimize the impact of any natural disaster or terrorist attack,” says Billy Turner, chairman of the Water Sector Coordinating Council and president of the Columbus, Ga., Water Works.
Developed as part of a collaboration between government representatives from such agencies as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the EPA and members of the Water Sector Coordinating Council, CQ reports that the tool’s questions range from general “Have you integrated security and preparedness into budgeting, training, and manpower responsibilities?” to more specific “For what period of time does your utility have backup power?”
“We sat down and said ‘what works here for measuring?’ ” says Jim Caverly, director of the partnership and outreach division in DHS’s Office of Infrastructure Protection. “So we jointly did that.”
For more information, see the DHS Web site.
