Security of the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure Many of the elements of the nation’s critical infrastructure are highly vulnerable to attacks due to remoteness (such as in the case of dams or water treatment facilities), size (such as in the case of water reservoirs) or other attributes of the facilities that can be exploited by terrorists. Because even minor disruptions in the nation’s critical infrastructure can have severe consequences for Americans, identifying these vulnerabilities and taking steps to prevent terrorist acts represents a timely and valuable enterprise. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation concerning how water facilities and other utilities can be targets of terrorist acts together with specific examples and supporting rationale and followed by a summary of the research and key findings concerning these issues in the conclusion.

The overwhelming majority of Americans take clean, fresh water, abundant cheap gasoline and unlimited supplies of electricity for granted. When these services are damaged by natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes or floods, people learn very quickly just how fragile the nation’s critical infrastructure is to short-term disruptions. More troubling still, though, is the potential for terrorist acts to cause...

For example, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organization supreme allied commander and retired U.S. Army Navy admiral, James Stavridis, cautions that an even a modest electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would have truly severe implications for the nation’s critical infrastructure, most especially its water treatment and electric grid. In this regard, according to Stavridis, the first of the three waves of EMPs are especially damaging to water treatment facilities while the final wave is most destructive to the nation’s electric grid and could even “deprive large parts of the country of electricity for weeks, months, or even a year or two” (as cited in Brimelow 4). The consequences of this type or comparable attack on the nation’s critical infrastructure are enormous and it could require as long as a year or even two before electricity was restored to the majority of Americans, as well as a nationwide famine that would result from the loss of agricultural crops and as much as 90% of the population could die as a result (Brimelow 5).
Although the fundamental responsibility for identifying threats to the nation’s critical infrastructure rests with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pursuant to its mission to (a)…