How Do We Best Secure Our Water Treatment Utilities?
How many times do we turn the faucet on, or the dishwasher, without giving any thought to the quality of the water flowing through our pipes? Most of us don’t often think about our local water treatment utilities, but they are vitally important to our health and wellbeing.
We all understand the importance of maintaining a clean water supply, even more so in the post-9/11 world. Unfortunately, water treatment facilities are a potential target for people with malicious intent, whether it be a small-scale act of vandalism or a serious terrorist attack. It’s no surprise then that the Department of Homeland Security has concerns over how to secure our vital water supply sector.
In this article, we’ll discuss one essential security layer – perimeter fencing – and how water treatment facilities can benefit from a high-end, integrated solution like Southwest Microwave fence detection systems installed by a turnkey electrical contractor like Wetherbee Electric.
Keeping the Public Safe
One of the primary uses for perimeter fencing around water treatment facilities is to enhance public safety. The chemicals that facilities employ to decontaminate water can be toxic if a person breathes them in without proper safety equipment.
The equipment within the facility is also dangerous to untrained persons. Large tanks of water pose a drowning risk, plus there are numerous slip, trip, and fall dangers throughout the grounds. Perimeter fencing is essential to keeping out curious visitors, even if they have no malicious intent.
Preventing Attack
Most people are aware of the dangers to our groundwater supply from pesticides, particulates in the air, prescription medicines, and other pollutants. Still, we often overlook the possibility of intentional attempts to contaminate our drinking water supply.
The United States has around 168,000 public drinking water facilities. The vast majority of those facilities are not under federal control, so there is not an established set of standards for how states and municipalities should be securing their water treatment sites. About 15% of the facilities are in urban areas, but those facilities provide clean drinking water to nearly 75% of the US population.
On the surface, it may seem as though those large facilities face a higher attack risk than facilities in rural areas. However, Congressional research suggests that smaller water treatment sites are more susceptible to attack because they are often less secure than those in large, urban centers.
Not all attacks are terror-related. In fact, small facilities are more likely the target of small-scale vandals. However, even vandalism can affect the efficient operation of a water treatment plant and affect the water quality in the area served by the facility.
RISK ASSESSMENT
From a macro perspective, Congress worries about “physical disruption, bioterrorism/chemical contamination, and cyber-attack” for facilities both large and small. Such attacks could potentially endanger human life in the short-term and lead to long-term corruption of the drinking water quality in an affected area.
Congress has encouraged water treatment facilities to conduct security vulnerabilities assessments. They have declared cyber-attacks to be the highest risk, followed by intentionally malicious attacks and insufficient resources to make upgrades to the nationwide network of water treatment facilities.
With strained financial resources, where should water treatment facilities focus their security spending? Southwest Microwave fence detection systems are high-quality, integration-ready, durable perimeter protection systems that are worthy of a water treatment facility’s limited dollars.
Why Southwest Microwave?
In addition to high-quality construction, durability, and a long lifespan, Southwest Microwave fencing systems have a variety of features that are attractive to drinking water treatment facilities. In our experience, facilities appreciate the Free-format Zoning capability of Southwest Microwave fences. Facilities can set alarm zones at any location, which reduces the hardware requirements, thus lowering the cost of installation. Zones can be large or small, depending on the facility requirements.
Southwest Microwave also features the latest technology for eliminating distributed noise from wind, rain, or vehicle traffic to reduce false alarms. When a legitimate disturbance occurs, the software can pinpoint the location of the disturbance to within about 3 feet of the location. Finding and addressing the issue is efficient and effortless with Southwest Microwave technology.
Southwest Microwave systems also allow for different levels of security. The most sensitive, essential areas like power controls can be under several layers of security, while those that are frequently accessed by employees can be under a different layer of security.
Why Wetherbee?
Wetherbee Electric is a Southwest Microwave preferred partner in Oklahoma and the surrounding region. We’ve been installing, programming, and maintaining Southwest Microwave fencing for years because it’s such a high-quality product upon which our customers can rely.
When you choose Wetherbee to install Southwest Microwave fencing at your water treatment facility, we’ll cover sourcing, installing, programming, calibrating, and maintaining your entire system. Southwest Microwave software integrates with other systems, and Wetherbee has also created custom solutions to suit our client’s unique needs. We understand that integration is essential to maintaining reliable, user-friendly security at water treatment sites, which is why our customers choose to work with us again and again.
Conduct a Risk Assessment, Then Contact Wetherbee
After you conduct your risk assessment, get in touch with Wetherbee to see how your facility could benefit from a Southwest Microwave fencing system. Wetherbee provides a turnkey solution to drinking water treatment sites in Oklahoma, which helps keep your costs down. Let us be your partner from start to finish to keep your facility and your surrounding community secure and healthy.
