Al Q after water supply?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

NYPost

WATER SUPPLY ON HIGH TERROR ALERT By BRAD HUNTER

July 15, 2002 -- The nation's waterworks are bracing for terror attacks that could leave millions high and dry, it was revealed yesterday. Documents captured from terror master Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda lieutenants in Afghanistan reveal that water-treatment plants are high on the list of terror targets, Time Magazine reports.

The sinister plans hint that al Qaeda operatives have been investigating ways to contaminate - or disrupt - the nation's water supply on a massive scale. The threat is so serious that the FBI issued a warning to the utilities last week.

Tom Curtis of the American Water Works Association - whose members supply water to 80 percent of the population - said manuals on how water treatment centers and utilities operate were recovered from al Qaeda's lairs.

Captured fanatics in Pakistan said al Qaeda has mulled tainting the water supply with cyanide or botulinum, but experts say the poisonous path would require truckloads of toxins.

Instead, it's more likely that terrorists would use truck bombs or other explosives to blow up pumping stations.

"For instance," Curtis told Time, "one city has six giant pumps, and they're all in one building. If you crashed an airplane into that building or blew it up it would cause half a million people to lose their water supply almost instantly." {OG note: that sounds like it might be New Orleans.]

And it could take up to 18 months to rebuild the custom-made pumps. Worse, other areas can be disrupted with a couple of sticks of dynamite.

A more nightmarish scenario has also emerged - a simultaneous attack on a city's water works just as hundreds of fires set the urban landscape ablaze.

Now, in addition to increased protection for the pumping stations and pipes, the utilities are going hat in hand to Washington seeking a bigger piece of the Homeland Security budget. The administration has earmarked $16 million but the industry said security enhancements will cost billions.

Various emergency services have seen big budget increases and waterworks pooh-bah Curtis said if there's no water, the improvements are moot.

"What happens when the firefighters pull up in their new trucks and night-vision goggles and they hook up to the fire hydrant and it's dry?" he asked.

Meanwhile, Time also reports that one of bin Laden's top henchmen - Abu Zubaydah - was recently transferred from a Navy ship to a U.S. base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Officials refused to discuss Zubaydah's location.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2002

Answers

My first real sign a few years ago that I was an inveterate doomer was my rabid reaction to a growing realization that my state, and probably others, were pursuing unwritten policy to discourage private wells dotted across the landscape and instead to promote increasingly consolidated public water supplies. At the time I felt this was nothing less than a national security issue.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2002

Moderation questions? read the FAQ