Catalyst Partners

Author Archive: Vance Taylor

Chemical Security – Keeping It Straightforward

Last week, the House passed a bill reauthorizing the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. While the bill keeps the program going for 3 years at a time, the legislation institutes a program largely unchanged from its current form...which...

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Water in West Virginia – An Ounce of Prevention…

Last Thursday, a chemical storage tank leaked about 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into the Elk River, just one mile upstream from the West Virginia American Water plant. Thankfully, the water plant owner was forward thinking enough to invest...

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Risk in Full Disclosure – Chlorine Locations Posted Online

Last week, the Center for Effective Government (CEG) posted online a comprehensive list of how much chlorine water utilities have onsite and provided the specific coordinates of where they are stored. This information, while already available in the public...

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Facing Water Shutdown, Major Utility Gets it Right

On Monday night, the Washington Sanitation and Suburban Commission (WSSC) announced that in order to do emergency repair work on a major main, it would be shutting down water service to roughly 150,000 people for a period of several...

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Amid Controversy and Scandal, Missing the Real Security Issues

Today’s political climate feels more like a twisted three-ring circus of controversy than an environment aimed at resolving (or even addressing) our nation’s true challenges. This puts our national security at risk, obscuring a focus on, for example, the...

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Security for Critical Water Infrastructure – How About Some Help for the Little Guy

In an era of diminished budgets and vanishing security grants, a recent break in at the Carters Lake Water Treatment Plant in Georgia highlights how the federal government is leaving small water systems, and the communities they serve, hanging...

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In the World of Cyber Security, It’s Go Time

Once again, America is officially under attack. According to multiple reports, including an "incident response" report from the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), U.S. natural gas pipeline companies are at the center of a major cyber...

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EPA – Proving How “Small” Government Can Be

The EPA was set to disregard the counsel of the Department of Justice, water system owners/operators and security experts by posting the non-Off-site Consequence Analysis (non-OCA) sections of the water sector’s RMPs this summer. Amid industry outcry, the EPA...

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Make Water, Not War

Ten years from now, global water shortages are likely to threaten U.S. security interests. Ask the Director of National Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency or someone from the Central Intelligence Agency; better yet, read the most recent National Intelligence...

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National Security vs Paperwork – EPA Plan Threatens Water System Security

There comes a time when sharing too much information is a dangerous thing, and this is what the Environmental Protection Agency is about to do. In June, the EPA plans to establish Internet access for the public to view...

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