Water Security Congress

Today the ASDWA Security Notes blog announced that registration is now open for the AWWA’s 2010 Water Security Congress. As I have mentioned before, water security is not chemical facility security (water treatment facilities are currently exempted from CFATS by specific language in the §550 authorizing legislation) but chemical security is an important component of water facility security for many water systems. Looking at the WSC10 technical program web page we can certainly see that the organizers of this annual get together certainly realized it this year. There are a number of presentations and one workshop that address chemical security related issues. On Sunday (09-19-10) there will be a workshop on the new voluntary consensus security standard (AWWA/ASME-ITC) for water facilities, J100-10 Risk And Resilience Management Of Water and Wastewater Systems, based on the RAMCAP – Plus methodology. This is one of the justifications that I mentioned in a previous blog that the AWWA is using to support their opposition to CFATS coverage for water treatment facilities. A Tuesday afternoon session on chlorine and cyber security will include a presentation on the legislative changes that are being proposed for the CFATS program. Of course the two of interest to this community is the removal of the water facility exemption and then the IST proposals. A second presentation in that session will look at IST evaluations in detail; specifically addressing drivers for chlorine substitutes. The remainder of that session will look at cyber security issues for industrial control systems.