CG Advisory Committee Teleconference

The Coast Guard published a notice in today’s Federal Register (76 FR 66313-66314) that the National Maritime Security Advisory Committee would be holding a teleconference on November 15^th to discuss working group results from the review of the Draft Certain Dangerous Cargo (CDC) Security Strategy being developed by the Coast Guard. Public participation is being encouraged but there are only 100 teleconference lines available on a first-come first-serve basis.

Readers may recall that the Coast Guard held a series of public meetings on this topic in August. I reported on some of the issues under discussion and it will be interesting to see how these play out in the NMSAC discussions. Specifically the teleconference will address the following five goals of the CDC Security Strategy (76 FR 66313):

• “Provide to internal and external stakeholders realtime national, regional, and local awareness of the risk of intentional attacks on the CDC Marine Transportation System

• “Consistently assess vulnerability to threats of intentional attacks on the CDC Marine Transportation System and mitigate the vulnerability to an acceptable level

• “Dynamically assess the potential consequences of an intentional attack on the CDC Marine Transportation System and capably mitigate, through coordinated response, the impact of a successful attack

• “Lead the development of national, regional, and local resiliency/recovery capability from successful attacks on the CDC Marine Transportation System

• “Establish the internal organization and processes, and external stakeholder relationships, to manage the national maritime CDC security program to an acceptable risk level”

Members of the public that want to do more than just listen to the discussions need submit written materials for consideration or request to make a 2 minute oral presentation by November 7^th. Written submissions may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # USCG-2011-0975). People wishing to make oral-presentations need to contact Ryan Owens (202-372-1108 or ryan.f.owens@uscg.mil).