<DOC> [107th Congress House Hearings] [From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access] [DOCID: f:84698.wais] HOW EFFECTIVELY ARE FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS WORKING TOGETHER TO PREPARE FOR A BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL OR NUCLEAR ATTACK? ======================================================================= HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ MARCH 22, 2002 __________ Serial No. 107-160 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform _______ U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 84-698 WASHINGTON : 2003 ____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington, MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland BOB BARR, Georgia DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio DAN MILLER, Florida ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois DOUG OSE, California DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois RON LEWIS, Kentucky JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JIM TURNER, Texas TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine DAVE WELDON, Florida JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia ------ JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont ------ ------ (Independent) Kevin Binger, Staff Director Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman RON LEWIS, Kentucky JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois DAN MILLER, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York DOUG OSE, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York Ex Officio DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California J. Russell George, Staff Director and Chief Counsel Henry Wray, Senior Counsel Justin Paulhamus, Clerk C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on March 22, 2002................................... 1 Statement of: Posner, Paul, Managing Director, Federal Budget Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office; Ron Castleman, Regional Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency; Ray P. Churay, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Michael P. Austin, Director, Arizona Division of Emergency Management; David Englethaler, Director, Arizona Department of Health Services and Response Office and Emergency Response Coordinator, Arizona Department of Health Services; and Lt. Col. Norman Beasley, Assistant Director for Criminal Investigations, Arizona Department of Public Safety........ 18 Spencer, Robert, director of Maricopa County Department of Emergency Management; Jack Harris, assistant chief, Phoenix Police Department; Steve Storment, assistant chief, Phoenix Fire Department; Tom Gallier, general manager, Water Utilities Department, city of Tempe; and Roy Stewart, president, Stewart Electric & Communications............... 86 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Austin, Michael P., Director, Arizona Division of Emergency Management, prepared statement of.......................... 71 Beasley, Lt. Col. Norman, Assistant Director for Criminal Investigations, Arizona Department of Public Safety, prepared statement of...................................... 80 Castleman, Ron, Regional Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared statement of................... 49 Churay, Ray P., Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, prepared statement of............................................... 58 Englethaler, David, Director, Arizona Department of Health Services and Response Office and Emergency Response Coordinator, Arizona Department of Health Services, prepared statement of...................................... 75 Flake, Hon. Jeff, a Representative in Congress from the State of Arizona, prepared statement of.......................... 13 Gallier, Tom, general manager, Water Utilities Department, city of Tempe, prepared statement of....................... 126 Harris, Jack assistant chief, Phoenix Police Department, prepared statement of...................................... 95 Horn, Hon. Stephen, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement of................. 2 Hull, Governor Jane D., prepared statement of................ 8 Posner, Paul, Managing Director, Federal Budget Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of........... 24 Spencer, Robert, director of Maricopa County Department of Emergency Management, prepared statement of................ 90 Stewart, Roy, president, Stewart Electric & Communications, prepared statement of...................................... 133 Storment, Steve, assistant chief, Phoenix Fire Department, paper entitled, ``Winning Plays, Essential Guidance from the Terrorism Line of Scrimmage''.......................... 99 HOW EFFECTIVELY ARE FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS WORKING TOGETHER TO PREPARE FOR A BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL OR NUCLEAR ATTACK? ---------- FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2002 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations, Committee on Government Reform, Tempe, AZ. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in the City Council Chamber, Tempe, AZ, Hon. Stephen Horn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Horn. Also present: Representative Flake. Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director and chief counsel; Henry Wray, senior counsel; Justin Paulhamus, clerk; Steve Voeller, chief of staff to Congressman Jeff Flake; and Pat Curtin, office manager for Congressman John Shadegg. Mr. Horn. A quorum being present, this hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations will come to order. We are delighted to have the Governor of the State of Arizona, and we are delighted to have you, you will be introduced to the hearing by the Councilman of this wonderful Town of Tempe, and we look forward to it. [The prepared statement of Hon. Stephen Horn follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. So Councilman Arredondo. Mr. Arredondo. Congressman Horn and chairman of the committee, thank you for coming to Tempe, Arizona. It is with great pleasure that I have the opportunity to say hello to you and extend the invitation to come back. And of course, Congressman Flake, thank you for always thinking of your home town and knowing that you can always tell it by the Butte out there. We appreciate you bringing this very important issue to the forefront and allowing Tempe to be part of it even though it is only hosting. It is my pleasure today to introduce our Governor of our great State of Arizona, the Honorable Jane D. Hull. I wanted to make some points perfectly clear because we do not get this honor oftentimes. It is my pleasure to introduce this Governor because she will always be known in Tempe as the Governor of Education where Arizona State University is very important. While she has inherited many difficult situations, she has worked very diligently to keep education, our community and our strengths together through her whole tenure as Governor. She has strengthened our relationships with Mexico, and because of the wonderful things she has done in Tempe, Arizona, she will always be the Governor of Education, and that we will always embrace her leadership and thank her for coming to Tempe, Arizona. The Governor of the State of Arizona, Jane D. Hull. [Applause.] Governor Hull. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Congressman Flake. We are very glad to welcome you all to Arizona. The chairman reminded me how well I know his daughter Marsha, who lives here and does a tremendous job for those of you who have not had the opportunity to meet her. But, again, we are glad to have you here today and glad to have you having an opportunity to hear what we have been doing after September 11th. As Congressman Flake and I both believe, the best ideas come from the people. They come from the bottom down, and not to disparage Washington or Phoenix, the capital, but they come much better from the bottom up than they do from the top down. The local citizens who live and work in the trenches are the ones really who should be making the decisions. I really appreciate the fact that you are here to listen to us because it is extremely important to all of us, particularly those of us, and the chairman is from California, that live in the West and think that no one from east of the Rockies even knows where the West is. So always glad to have you out here. I am here today to testify regarding the actions that were taken by the State of Arizona and our local governments in coordination with the Federal Government to address the challenges of assuring security of our State and our Nation. Along with our fellow citizens across the country, Arizona has watched the horror of September 11th unfold before our eyes. In a single moment, we witnessed the worst of human behavior, and in the next the very best of human behavior. And even more, we witnessed the tremendous spirit of Americans. As in other States, Arizona has demonstrated courage in the face of adversity. Within hours of the attack, Arizona members of FEMA's emergency response team, including several canine units, were mobilized and were one of the first groups to be transported by military plane to Washington. Several of them are hear today. Did the dog come? The dog is not here. We had the dog on the floor of the house for opening ceremonies. So sorry he is not here today. They were followed by two teams of Phoenix fire fighters, some of the same brave men and women who responded to the bombing in Oklahoma. They are recognized as some of the finest fire fighters in the Nation, and we are fortunate to have them serve us daily. Citizens of every background in Arizona stood in line in 100 degree heat to donate blood. Others organized the collection of blankets and materials and supplies for shipment to both New York and to Washington. Arizona's children were especially moving. They collected, as children did in other States, their pennies, their savings, and donated them, as well as their own toys, to the children who had been left homeless and in many cases parentless in New York. Since the tragic events, which I think have changed all of our lives and I believe has changed all of our priorities, we know that the threat of possible terrorist activities will go on at any time and any place, and certainly what has just happened in Israel is appalling to all of us. The sense of having personal security in our lives, I think, is probably gone forever or changed at least. The State of Arizona has stood ready, however, to take all of the necessary actions to protect the people of Arizona and the United States when faced by those who would harm us and our way of live. We are not new to comprehensive efforts aimed at anticipating and responding to possible terrorist attacks. The cooperative spirit of all levels of government was evident when the city of Tempe hosted Super Bowl XXX in 1996. It was apparent again in our very successful efforts in preparation for Y2K. And in 1997, we established the Arizona Domestic Preparedness Task Force, consisting of Federal, State, county, and local agencies, public and private entities who develop plans for the detection, prevention, and response of terrorist activities. That was done largely because of funding from Washington, which we appreciate. Those years of preparation by true professionals allow us to respond quickly to the threats posed by the attacks of September 11th. Within minutes, the Arizona Department of Public Safety mobilized their operations center headed by a national expert on weapons of mass destruction, whom you will be hearing from later today. DPS developed a unique, secure communication system to insure that we have the best lines of communication among Federal, State, county, and local law enforcement. Arizona is a recognized leader in those efforts, and you will be hearing from them in just a few minutes. Also within the Arizona Department of Emergency Management, known as FEMA, Arizona FEMA had its emergency operations center open and running with Federal, State and local agencies standing in alert. This center has been in operation for decades dealing with national disasters and other emergencies. It directly communicates with State and local agencies, the FBI, FEMA, Red Cross, and members of major utilities and other private entities. I was out there that day, and I had also been out there around midnight on Y2K, and again, the setup, you have a lot of people who come in from all over to basically work those 24-7 that everybody worked for so long. The Domestic Preparedness Task Force reviewed and upgraded its response plans. The State Health Lab, located within the FBI, stayed open around the clock to insure that any reports of suspected anthrax or other forms of bioterrorism were immediately dealt with. Over 900 suspected samples were tested, and I am happy to report that all of the samples were negative. I established a State Homeland Security Coordinating Council consisting of 12 State agencies to oversee all State response efforts. We really do not have a homeland securities czar. We have two or three czars. So let me introduce two of them that are here today. Dr. Jim Shamadan. I do not know where he is. Back there somewhere? George Weiss, and Sandra Schneider has just joined us, along with Steve Truitt, our Tucson Director who basically handled the daily coordination of these efforts. I activated Operation Vigilance and setup a central telephone number at that DPS center for leads, for reports of terrorism, for anything that needed to be in the intelligence community, and basically all of those calls were followed up by almost 100 DPS detectives. Obviously, I called on the National Guard early and often. We basically had National Guard at the President's request into the airports within a week. Like all States, we had to wait for the FAA training to come in. They have stood with the Federal agents at our border with Mexico, and again, they were put there in a civilian capacity to facilitate the commerce. Arizona is a State that, because we are very close to Mexico, September 11th was obviously coming into our produce season, as with California. We were very concerned about what was going to happen if the commerce could not go through. They facilitated that commerce, and it actually went very, very smoothly, and the rest of them will be pulling out this week. They assisted the Bureau of Reclamation with patrols at Hoover Dam. The bureau finally got people up there, but it was a long time when basically our DPA and our National Guard were up there and some of Nevada's. They worked alongside the Deputy of Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to provide around-the-clock security for the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Plant, which is the Nation's largest nuclear plant. We worked closely with Mayor Rimsza of Phoenix, who did an outstanding job, along with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, in coordinating this multi-agency task force to insure the safety of the thousands of fans who attended the World Series in Phoenix. And, again, that was another potential terrorist threat target. These efforts can only be successful with cooperation and communication, and I think I used those words many, many times during September and October. On the Federal level, my office and the State agencies have been in regular contact with the White House, the Office of Homeland Security, and various other Federal agencies. We have held frequent conference calls with cabinet members. In fact, we love the briefings that we get about twice a week with Tom Ridge, if he was there, with Joe Arpaio, with all of the offices of the administration. They were extremely helpful in keeping the Governors aware of what was going on. I was in Washington about two or 3 weeks ago, and I had the opportunity of meeting not only with President Bush, but with Homeland Security Director--I still call him Governor Tom Ridge. He says he prefers Governor--to talk more about that relationship and certainly with Governor Ridge to talk about the smart border concept, the fact that we have done a lot of work in Arizona on technology on the border, and all we need now, to mention those dirty words, is funding. I know there are a couple of bills going through that would help us both with creating the smart borders that we need and, second, in rebuilding the Hoover Dam bypass, which basically the Hoover Dam has now been closed to trucks since September 11th and will remain closed to trucks because of the condition of the dam. So we are hoping that we will get the funding to complete that bypass road, which has been started, so that we do not have that situation again. It is costing truckers and those who are transporting goods a lot of money to have to go clear around, as Jeff knows, but you cannot come down that road, and we are losing some trucks periodically. So, again, we are hopeful that can be resolved. I was recently in Mexico with Governor Fox, and he has insured his commitment to working with us with the border problems. They have done a lot in Mexico to alleviate some of the problems that we have had. I believe that Arizona enjoys one of the finest interagency cooperative spirits in the Nation. There is always room for improvement. In that effort, in the next 2 months, two conferences related to terrorism will be held in Arizona. One is designed to educate first-responders and health care providers on the potential threats of bioterrorism. It is co- hosted by my office, by the Department of Health Services, the Department of Military and Emergency Affairs, and the FBI. A second conference will deal with communications interoperability and is co-hosted by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission. As was evidenced in New York, radio and electronic communications between first-responders is a dire necessity. This situation, particularly in Arizona, needs vast improvement. I appreciate the Federal funds that are planning to come our way to specifically address this crucial issue to all of the States. I would be remiss if I didn't bring just two other issues to your attention. First, the attack and response to terrorism both here and abroad shows how vital Arizona's military bases are to the defense of our country. We need to do everything we can do to protect them, to protect Luke, to protect Yuma, to protect Fort Huachuca, and to protect Davis-Monthan, and certainly we work with that a great deal, and I would just remind you about the base closings. Second, some of the Federal funds that are available for security purposes have been designed to include a match of various sorts from State and local governments. As you well know from the West, and I am sure you have heard from a lot of the Governors; you have not heard from me about, ``the financial condition that most of the states are in.'' Yesterday I signed a bill that will remove another $230 million from the 2002 budget. We have already removed about $675. So the 2002 budget is down $1 billion, and hopefully will balance in July. We now begin the job of cutting another $1 billion from the 2003 budget. That is about 17 percent of the State's budget, and I have obviously tried very hard not to hit education. So it is tough for all of the Governors, but again, I believe that what is being done in Washington is extremely important, and I would only ask that as we go for matches, that one understands that all of the States and on behalf of literally all of the Western States, we are all suffering, and it will be difficult for us to make matches. Finally, just in ending, and again, I thank you for coming, and I thank you for listening; the State of Arizona is in the forefront of the Nation's efforts to prepare for and, if necessary, respond to terrorist threats whenever and however they occur. Our local first-responders stand shoulder to shoulder with our Federal colleagues. We appreciate the tremendous cooperation that we have received from all the Federal and local agencies. We appreciate the briefings and the conversations that we have had with the cabinet officers, with the officials of FEMA, and certainly Governor Ridge is talking to our people once a week, which we really appreciate. I think we have set in place a very flexible, responsive, domestic preparedness program that assures that Federal, State, and local officials work together as seamlessly as possible to meet any challenge. I want to thank you for this opportunity to appear before you, and thank you again for coming West, even though both of you are from the West, and I know that you will enjoy hearing from our agencies and from the panels that are setup. They are the true experts, and more than that, they are the people who have really pulled this together because they know what they are doing. With that, I want to thank you very much, and if you have any questions, I would be glad to answer. [The prepared statement of Governor Hull follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, we thank you very much for giving us the really leadership that you have provided as Governor and the cooperation you received from it. And I want to now ask that Representative Flake, on behalf of the committee here, will thank you for us. Mr. Flake. I just want to echo those words. I know that you have a very busy schedule. You have outlined some of the issues that you are dealing with, and so we appreciate it a great deal. It speaks to the importance that you place on this issue, and we all know that one of the hallmarks of the whole administration has been the interagency coordination and cooperation that exists here in Arizona. And we at the Federal level learn a lot from that because we have our own problems with interagency issues, and the fact that you were able to pull together such a great team in such a short period of time and carried out such great work speaks well for you, and we really appreciate you carving out time in your busy schedule to be here. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Hon. Jeff Flake follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Governor Hull. Thank you very much. Have a nice weekend. Mr. Horn. Thank you. Mr. Arredondo. Chairman Horn, hopefully you, too, as we in Arizona and particularly Tempe have come to appreciate the Governor, because of the wisdom and the leadership she has provided, we congratulate her and thank her for coming to Tempe. Congressman Flake, prior to me introducing our next guest, I would be remiss upon our city, our educators if I did not say thank you to the hard work you have carried back in Washington, DC, to provide those homeless kids a safe haven to attend school. I thank you for your leadership, your hands on approach to continue the support where kids have an opportunity every day to succeed. Thank you for representing our district very well. With that, it is with great pleasure that I get to introduce the Honorable Skip Rimsza. Skip was tied up in traffic on the Phoenix side. So it took him a little longer to get to the Tempe side. [Laughter.] But he is here, and we congratulate Mr. Rimsza for the things that he has stood for and has done in Phoenix. We know for a fact that he has overseen already 16 new additional city parks to enhance the quality of life for his citizens. But more so and the most important thing that we would like to recognize and thank him is for the new units in the Phoenix Police Department dedicated to solely fighting hate crimes. You know, I could go on and on, but the real person is here, and it is time for me to introduce the Honorable Skip Rimsza, Phoenix Mayor. [Applause.] Mr. Rimsza. Thank you very much. I do apologize for my late arrival. We are very pleased to host you here in our community, and I know the city of Tempe is delighted to have you here in our facility. I will just take a few short moments to chat with you about the urban center challenges we have for homeland security, and there are a couple of things that at least from my perspective are important to touch upon. First, we understand in the city of Phoenix that there is no single agency capable of expectory planning by themselves for the kinds of things that we are now forced to consider as potential elements that happen in urban centers. So you being here today and the partnership, frankly, that has developed since September 11th between local government, State government, Federal Government are nothing short of profound. I would refer quite personally to the World Series game, the very first one that was played here in Phoenix right after the September 11th attacks as one where all levels of government came together to provide the level of security that was, I think, critically important for that event to be a success. The collaboration at that event with the Federal Government and State and local organizations was nothing short of profound, and I do think the September 11th events have caused us all to set aside any parochial perspectives we might have had and find even better ways to work together. We think the collaboration that has resulted in the new funding that is being discussed for us is very important to us and you. One of the key issues for cities, I would tell you, is this. We would like to make sure that Congress recognizes that cities really are the places where public safety is provided. To give you an example, cities in Arizona have about 10,000 public safety employees. The State itself has 1,000. So we are kind of the place we like to think, and I think the Vice Mayor would agree with me, where the rubber meets the road when it comes to public safety. So as you look at the funding that might be available to protect our communities from any kind of terrorist acts, we would like you to very carefully consider the places where the work is being done today and make sure the resources get to those locations. I also have to take a short moment and speak about urban center cities. From our perspective, and we think it is broadly held, that locations where terrorists might focus their activities will tend to be densely populated urban centers. Once again, therefore, we would suggest that the allocation of any resources or partnerships be focused on those urban centers so that they can respond to the likely locations of attacks. There are some exceptions to that I think we all recognize, such as nuclear power plants or water supply sources that are outside urban centers, but it would be something we would really like you, too, to think about as you work through this process. The next one is sustaining the funding. I've had both the joy and the pleasure and the pain of dealing with the COPS MORE Grants over the years, and it was nice to have the Federal Government pickup a portion of adding new police officers, and it was helpful, and we took advantage of that. But the reality is many urban center cities, in particular were not able to take full advantage of it because, unlike Phoenix, they weren't growing. Their tax bases weren't growing, and as you may know and may recall, cities had to commit to keep those officers on after 5 years out of their own operating budgets. And that is, I think, a challenge that should be considered as you look at funding for these kinds of security investments, not just initial funding for the capital equipment or the additional training, but some base maintenance funding to keep equipment and, frankly, the people sharp for, I think, decades to come. In fact, from our perspective, this is the new reality. This is not something that is going to go away ever in the future of our country. And so some baseline permanent funding after the initial large funding I think is important to consider. I would suggest to you that the FEMA model for urban search and rescue has been very successful for our communities. As you may be aware, the city of Phoenix's fire fighters responded to an earthquake in California, obviously a tremendous disaster. We also were onsite in Oklahoma City and were part of the recovery effort in New York City. The one challenge with that for us and, I think, you is that response is 72 hours after the incident, and I think all of us are recognizing that this investment that we are talking about making now needs to be put in place in a way that we can respond within minutes, if possible hours probably at the longest. So it is a different kind of investment than the FEMA model, but the FEMA model is not a bad backdrop to consider for your processes. Just to kind of give you a quick outline for that, FEMA funds for us the capitalization of some fairly sophisticated equipment, some very specialized training from our fire fighters. We take that equipment. We have it palletized and stored in a location here in the valley, and then if called by FEMA, we can rally our fire fighters and police officers and that equipment in about 3 days to put them on the scene to help with any rescue and recovery efforts. That system works pretty well with the one enhancement we think is necessary, which is having equipment more readily available and having the training more active on a more day-to- day basis. The last thing I would mention to you, which is a critical issue to every public safety system in the country, is the new radio systems that we are all capitalizing today. The Phoenix City voters just approved $120 million to replace our old, antiquated radio system with a new 800 megahertz radio system, and I am pleased and proud that the Phoenix voters wanted to do that. We are doing this so we can communicate directly with other agencies internal to the city. That would be so that a police officer and a fire fighter and someone from Streets and Transportation can all communicate at the same time on the same radio system. At the same time, we want to be able to communicate with other public safety agencies either in other cities, like Tempe, or the State. One of the problems that appears to be arising with this new, very significant investment, virtually every city in America, is the sale of the 700 megahertz public safety spectrum, and that's because, to put it simply, there is a level of over-speak between the two systems that is problematic. You might have heard or recall that in New York some of the challenges that they experienced when the fire fighters and police officers entered the building is the loss of communications. One of the reasons we are all looking to 800 megahertz is to avoid that kind of loss because it's a better frequency for public safety officials to operate on. One of the things we are all concerned about is if we inadvertently sell the 700 megahertz system and then create over-speak. All we are asking is solve that problem before we sell those radio frequencies so that our officers do not get blocked from critical communications when they are most important. If you do not mind, we have a short video I think we are going to play for you, and then I will conclude. [Video played.] Mr. Rimsza. I would just conclude that this model is one that is a good base model. The challenge for all of us is how to make this even more efficient and more quickly able to respond. I can tell you from the perspective of us locals, the enhanced training and equipment that is available here within our community is very important to us, and we have always been glad to partner with FEMA in this. I would hope though, as always, that we never have to respond ever again to one of these tragedies, but it makes me feel good, as Mayor, that we are prepared to. Thank you. Mr. Horn. Well, we thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I was telling the staff on the way out that your fire department has been No. 1 in the Nation and that we can be proud of that. I assume they are still No. 1. Mr. Rimsza. I am certain they are. If they were not, they would be calling me for more equipment. [Laughter.] Mr. Horn. Well, we thank you very much for that overview. Mr. Arredondo. Chairman Horn, Congressman Flake, it is time for you to get on to your business. We at Tempe want to thank you for being here. I would be remiss if I did not allude to the fact that our two Assistant Police Chiefs are here in the back. If they would please stand. And our fire department is represented here, and we will even have some of our staff members participating in your panel. As you have requested, there will be a list given. You do something that no other congressional hearing folks do and that is the recognition of the people that really make this happen. We at Tempe extend our warmest hello to you and congratulations in being here. Thank you. Mr. Horn. Well, that is well put because that is exactly what we are trying to do, and as we all know, September 11, 2001 the world witnessed the most devastating attacks ever committed on U.S. soil. And as we have looked about this, we are going around to various cities and parts of America, and we wanted those who live in the great State of Arizona and its fine cities to know that they can rely on these systems should the need arise. We have been interested in the chemical attacks, the biological attacks, the water supply, and as everybody knows in this room, the West has always had problems with water supply. I look with great interest on what is happening in Arizona, your productivity in food and orchards and all the other things, and we want to make sure that it's purified and not compromised by some of the terrorists. When I was in Europe a month ago, four terrorists tried to poison the Rome water supply, and so this is the kind of thing we face. We are going to ask during this and get ideas from people that are going to be witnesses so that we can be better prepared for that type of thing, which we have never had to face before September 11th. So let us bring the first panel here, which is Councilman Arredondo and Paul Posner, who is the Managing Director. I will announce them as they start with their presentation. And Ron Castleman, Ray P. Churay, and Michael Austin, David Englethaler, and Lieutenant Colonel Norman Beasley. We have seats for Panel 1 right here, and we will start the way we generally do. We will swear in all of the witnesses, and if you do not mind, just stand and raise your right hand. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Horn. We will start as we do always in Washington and out in the field with the U.S. General Accounting Office as headed by the Comptroller General of the United States, who has the best job and the toughest job in Washington. He has a 15- year term and nobody can mess with him. [Laughter.] Including Congress and Presidents, and we have got an excellent one in Mr. Walker right now. The expert from the General Accounting Office now, Paul Posner is Managing Director, Federal Budget Issues of the U.S. General Accounting Office. GAO works for the Congress and not the executive branch. We look to them, and I looked at the terrorism blue books. There must be at least 50 of them already. I mean, they are on top of this, and we appreciate that. So, Mr. Posner. STATEMENTS OF PAUL POSNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUDGET ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; RON CASTLEMAN, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; RAY P. CHURAY, ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, PHOENIX FIELD OFFICE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION; MICHAEL P. AUSTIN, DIRECTOR, ARIZONA DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT; DAVID ENGLETHALER, DIRECTOR, ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES AND RESPONSE OFFICE AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE COORDINATOR, ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES; AND LT. COL. NORMAN BEASLEY, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS, ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY Mr. Posner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it is a pleasure to be here in the Phoenix area. I want to again commend you for holding field hearings that are particularly relevant since taking a bottomup look at our system is so important for how we prepare to protect the Nation from terrorism attacks. It is somewhat novel to have a highly intergovernmental issue be focused in the national security area. We are used to dealing with State and local governments in document program areas, whether it's education and healthcare and law enforcement and a variety of other things. Well, we have learned that nothing we do in the Nation can be done by one government alone; that critically any national goal, whether it is protecting public health or whether it is educating handicapped children is critically dependent on State and local governments and our ability to form partnerships with them over time. What we are learning now is protecting the Nation's boundaries and borders itself from foreign threats is equally dependent on harmonious and important working relationships. What does this mean then for what we have to think about going forward? One is that it means Federal initiatives are really not Federal. They are national in nature, and that is one of the reasons why meeting together at the local level is so critical. It means that Federal orders and policies mean very little if they are not done in partnerships with State and local governments and the private sector to address these challenges. And ultimately the challenge for us at the Federal level, we have to balance the national interests in obtaining preparedness and mitigation with the unique needs and interests of our local communities. One size will not nor should it fit all. For both sides this kind of arrangement raises opportunities and challenges. By working collectively with State and local governments, the Federal Government gains the opportunity to get support and resources that we simply do not have. I mean, we cannot defend and protect water systems in this country or transit systems or anything else. These are owned by other levels of government. Fundamentally you were the first- responders to every single serious incident, and we do not. So we get the chance to enhance the protection of the Nation. We risk the potential that we are going to have inconsistent approaches and we are going to have to basically adopt the priorities that local governments feel are important. Some Federal officials may feel that is a risk, but nonetheless, we have no other choice but to work through the system. Local governments gain support and financing, as well, for critical local issues. But they risk being exposed to national standards and requirements that may not particularly fit well with particular local values and conditions. With that as kind of the framing, I want to briefly reprise the written statement that will be entered in the record with your permission. Mr. Horn. Without objection, that is automatically in the record. Mr. Rimsza. Thank you. The main points are these. A national strategy at the Federal level is critical. We at the Federal level have many players, many agencies involved in this whole area of counterterrorism and homeland security. At latest count, over 40 Federal agencies have a role to play. The concern is obviously that this breeds the potential for fragmentation, overlap, duplication, inefficiency. We think this is a longstanding problem with Federal initiatives across the Board, not just homeland security, particularly important here because the States are so large. There is also a concern that there is the potential for this problem to get worse, not better, after crisis. Well intentioned people across the board attempt to become relevant in solving problems. In the process, for example, after Oklahoma City, we noted that a number of agencies got into the act of providing assistance to State and local governments for training and planning. That may have been welcomed by some States and local governments. Others told us that created widespread confusion and overlap and frustration in dealing with the Federal Government. So the concern is the crises like we have just experienced presents opportunities, but they also present potential challenges, and the fragmentation could get worse before it gets better, as a lot of agencies get in the act. We have recommended consolidation of State and local planning grants and training grants at the Federal level, and we are pleased that at least the President's budget does suggest the need to do that, and as you know, he has recommended a block grant to get that done. The second point going forward is the need for strong national goals and indicators. We have something at the Federal level called the Government Performance and Results Act, which really was modeled after State and local governments more than anything we have done. This sets the table that anything we do in the budget or in management should be informed by some expectation of what we are going to accomplish in terms of the results. We think the preparedness will not be sustainable. Funding, support, programs are going to be difficult to sustain if we do not have informed, balanced, national level kinds of measures done in partnership with State and local governments and the private sector. Without it, we lack the ability to make budget decisions based on performance. This could lead to either the abandonment of effective programs or the endless funding of ineffective ones. The point is: How do we move then from an environment where we can really start to measure what we are trying to do, measure levels of preparedness, measure the impact of Federal funds, particularly relevant now that we are ratcheting up that level? And what we mean by this is not just measuring input, not the number of people in training, although that is part of it. But trying as best we can, as difficult as it is, to measure some kinds of indicators about how well prepared we are. Obviously there are a lot of efforts already underway in the State and local community and at the Federal community. Exercises, the Emergency Management Assistance Accreditation Programs that States and local governments are working among themselves are part of the question because the idea of how you measure performance and set goals is not one that any one level government, again, should do, certainly not the Federal Government. These standards need to be national and not Federal, and ultimately they need to be premised on hard work reaching some agreement of what does it mean to be prepared. Is it the lack of an event? Is it the limitation or containment of any damage that does happen as a result of an event? Those are some of the difficult questions we are going to have to start thinking about. Finally, we need to think about how we best define a Federal role to promote State and local preparedness in ways that really foster the kind of partnership we are talking about. States and local governments' resources, as folks here know, alone are not sufficient. We can build on the all hazards approach to emergency management. That is important. If you have experience and you are prepared for an earthquake and other kinds of disasters, you are well on the way to being prepared for this, but this threat is different. It crosses conventional boundaries and involves new actors, different skills, new legal authorities, the private sector in ways really that are very, very difficult to fashion as people here know better than I. So the challenge for the Federal Government is how can we design tools to help harmonize the interests of all the partners, and here we offer some suggestions and a statement based on what we've learned elsewhere in the Federal system. The point is our goal should be to enhance, not to preempt, and our goal should be to protect others who may want to take our money and supplant it and replace it for their own funds. We want to somehow strike this balance. In the area of grants, for example, there are three or four challenges we think we need to kind of think about as we go forward. One is to insure that the money is well targeted to places that, No. 1, have the greatest threats and, No. 2, have the least financial capability of delivering the public services on their own, and this means devising some reasonable indicators that can separate out these kinds of issues. We have suggested in disaster assistance that FEMA do a better job of articulating criteria to define when a jurisdiction is more capable than others of handling emergencies of certain types. We need to do a better job at the Federal level, not just in this area, but across the board in targeting Federal money. The second issue that is perennial that challenges us throughout the Federal Assistance System is fiscal substitution. Clearly, we are trying to offer money because there is a problem. If the money, in fact, is used by State or local governments, as we often find it is, to replace local money, then, in fact, we have not accomplished anything except general fiscal relief. In fact, we did a study that said in general across the board about 60 cents of every Federal dollar given to State and local governments is supplanted. There are ways to protect this. We have maintenance of effort provisions. We find that some areas are more vulnerable to this than others, particularly areas where State and local governments have longstanding involvement. The substitution is a particular problem. A third related issue is accountability. We know that whenever the Federal Government grants money, the State and local governments have their own accountability for their own citizens, but somehow we have to develop procedures to insure that there is some performance reporting back to the Federal level. One thing we have learned about block grants over the years is if we do not have meaningful ways of telling appropriators what we are getting for that money, notwithstanding the discretion and flexibility we give to those communities, congressional interest withers away and those programs tend to wither away as well or get recategorized. So as we think about this FEMA block grant, meaningful ways to kind of translate local performance into results that can be reported consistently at the national level really important. Another important strategy, encourage partnerships below the Federal level. Just as we are fragmented, we know that communities in metropolitan areas, for example, face tremendous barriers in working together across boundaries. You have solved them much more so than we have because you have had to, but we know that an emergency management and otherwise economies of scale can really make a difference. Mutual aid agreements are a testament to that. The question is: As we design Federal programs, can we encourage more of that to take place? Would that be useful? The metropolitan planning model of the Department of Transportation's ICE TEA is an example where all grants essentially have to get screened by a regional planning agency. Whether that works or not here remains to be seen, but some kind of mechanism to encourage that process is important. Ultimately what we need to think about as we design assistance is sustainability. We want to have our initiatives make a difference for the long and not the short-term. The Federal Government does best at starting and building, stimulating capacity. Ideally we would like to see these initiatives become institutionalized and build support, get a head of steam on their own on the local level. This might happen if we're aiding the kind of functions that provide multi-purpose functionality, not just terrorism preparedness, but preparedness for other kinds of hazards. The public health example is a good one where when fighting bioterrorism, we're really strengthening the public health system to protect against a variety of threats, and that kind of thing augers well for the prospects of enhancing our long- term preparedness. A few other tools that we talk about in the testimony are in the area of regulation. Crises have a way of prompting national standards, and at times we visited some communities where already some local governments are telling us that they are facing challenges in coming to, dealing with large, for example, national rail systems and rail corporations, and how we can develop ways to better regulate if we need to and develop standards that are really cooperative in nature. That is a real challenge. And finally, the concern of information sharing. How do we insure that we share the kind of intelligence that State and local governments need to really effectively target their own resources in areas? As you know, Presidential Directive 3, Mr. Ridge last week announced a new warning system. The challenge of providing State and local governments with access to sensitive national security information that is nonetheless vital for their citizens is a challenge we are going to be facing. I know there is some legislation that has been developed that certainly warrant some thought and consideration. The point is that we can help them better face their challenges in terrorism by better sharing information, but they can also help us, and that is the last point here. This is a two-way street. This is not just the Federal Government coming down as a benefactor. Basically State and local governments have vital resources. They are essential to help us interdict and prevent terrorism as well. With 600,00 local police officer, 200,000 sheriff staff, you have really the resources to know better what is going on in communities than the Federal Government does. And how can we find ways to get that information back from you and utilize it productively to defend against these threats? That is an emerging challenge. We notice the INS is starting to contract with certain communities to have them monitor overstayed visa applicants, to take advantage, in other words, of this great capacity that is out there. So ultimately, in conclusion, the three points that are essential we think for preparing defending the Nation remain: defining a strategy, to defining the national objectives and the Federal role, developing reasonable and meaningful national, not Federal performance accountability standards, and designing tools and choosing them well and effectively to get the job done. [The prepared statement of Mr. Posner follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Thank you very much. We appreciate that overall national, State, city and regional perspective. We now go to Mr. Ron Castleman, the Regional Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. He is based in Dallas, and we are glad to have you here. And I might add to all you do not have to read everything that you have. If you could summarize that would be helpful because we have got ten more witnesses. Thank you. Mr. Castleman. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I am Ron Castleman, Regional Director of Region VI of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and it is a pleasure for me to be here today to discuss the pressing matter of how FEMA is assisting State and local governments to prepare for a potential terrorist attack involving biological, chemical or nuclear agents. FEMA is the Federal agency responsible for leading the Nation in preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters. Our success depends on our ability to organize and lead a community of local, State, and Federal agencies and volunteer organizations. The Federal Response Plan forms the heart of our management framework and lays out the process by which interagency groups work together to respond as a cohesive team to all types of disasters. In response to the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, the Federal Response Plan has proven to be an effective and efficient framework for managing all phases of disasters and emergencies. Much of our success in emergency management can be attributed to our historically strong working relationship with State and local partners. Through our preparedness programs, we provide the financial, technical, planning, training and exercise support to give State, local, and tribal governments the capabilities they need to protect public health, safety, and property both before and after disaster strikes. In meeting the challenges ahead for State and local government, FEMA's Office of National Preparedness is becoming more robust. The mission of the Office of National Preparedness is to provide leadership in coordinating and facilitating all Federal efforts to assist State and local first-responders, as well as emergency management organizations with planning, training, equipment, and exercises. We continue to work with all 50 States and territories and federally recognized Indian tribes and Alaskan native villages to implement our current and other grant programs to assist State, tribal, and local governments. Our programs enhance their capabilities to respond to all types of hazards and emergencies, such as chemical incidents, incidents involving radiological substances, and natural disasters. With respect to Arizona, we continue to work very closely with the Arizona Division of Emergency Management. Through our terrorism consequence management preparedness assistance grant, we support the State's activities in the readiness arena. With FEMA financial support, Arizona has in place its domestic preparedness task force that concentrates on such activities as developing and testing the State's strategy for preparedness and response; identifying necessary steps, Arizona communities need to take to prepare for weapons of mass destruction events; and establishing the most appropriate training curriculum to deal with domestic terrorism. Further, each of Arizona's counties received FEMA funds from Arizona to participate in a statewide domestic terrorism risk assessment. Finally, our terrorism consequence management assistant grant is also supporting various training workshops throughout the Phoenix area that cover mass fatalities, anthrax response, and other aspects of a response to a terrorist event. We recognize that chemical, biological, and radiological scenarios will present unique challenges to the first-responder community. Of these types of attacks, we are in many ways better prepared for chemical attack because such an incident is comparable to a large scale hazardous material incident. In such an event, EPA and the Coast Guard are well connected to local hazardous material responders, State and Federal agencies and the chemical industries. There are systems and plans in place for response to hazardous material systems that are routinely used for both small and large scale events. EPA is also the primary agency for hazardous materials functions of the Federal Response Plan. Bioterrorism, on the other hand, presents a greater immediate concern. With the covert release of a biological agent, the first-responders will be hospital staff, medical examiners, private physicians, and animal control workers instead of the traditional first-responders with whom we have a long-term relationship. The Department of Health and Human Services leads the efforts of the health and medical community to plan and prepare for a national response to a public health emergency and is the critical link between the health and medical community and the larger Federal response. Concerning the radiological threat, the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan has 17 Federal agency signatories, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the lead Federal agency for coordinating the overall response, and FEMA is responsible for coordinating nonradiological support to that. Finally, FEMA's Office of National Preparedness has asked the FEMA regions to provide information on what the region has done to review and modify State and local radiological emergency preparedness plans for response to a sudden catastrophic event. It is FEMA's responsibility to insure that the national emergency management system is adequate to respond to the consequences of catastrophic emergencies and disasters regardless of cause. We rely on our partners at the State and local level, and without question, they need support to further strengthen capabilities and operation capacity. FEMA must insure that the national system has the tools to gather information, set priorities, and deploy resources effectively. The creation of the Office of National Preparedness and our emphasis on training, planning, equipment, and exercises will enable us to better focus on our efforts and will help our Nation become better prepared for the future. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Mr. Castleman follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. We thank you very much. That's a very thorough statement and very helpful to us. Our next witness is Ray P. Churay, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, the Phoenix Field Office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Churay. Good afternoon, Chairman Horn, Congressman Flake, members of the subcommittee, and distinguished participants from Arizona. Thank you for the opportunity to represent the FBI at this hearing. Terrorist events of recent years both in the United States and elsewhere have driven home the importance of the absolute necessity of the FBI to work closely with State and local law enforcement and first-responder agencies. The Phoenix FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI's National Infrastructure and Computer Intrusion Program, and the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Program are the main vehicles facilitating that cooperation and support. Each of these efforts address both international and domestic terrorist threats that involve all appropriate local, State, and Federal law enforcement, first-responder, and infrastructure related agencies. I have provided a more detailed statement. However, in the limited time available, I would like to provide just a few examples of how this program works. Members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force have productive liaison with the Arizona Department of Health Services and their bioterrorism lab. The ADHS and lab are essential in immediately addressing an overt biological threat and tracking hospital cases to identify spiking illnesses that may be an indication of a covert biological attack. Other JTTF liaisons relevant to the purposes of this hearing include the Metro Medical Response System, which receives Federal funding; the Arizona Office of Homeland Defense, which you have heard about earlier; and the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs. The Joint Terrorism Task Force has participated in numerous joint training exercises, which included these and many other agencies. These exercises involved simulated chemical, biological and nuclear threats. Some of the locations included Phoenix, Mesa, Lake Havasu City, Fort Huachuca and Sierra Vista, Sky Harbor Airport, and the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. Since the events of September 11th, the FBI has worked closely with the law enforcement community to create two satellite Joint Terrorism Task Forces, one at Tucson and one at Flagstaff, and has attempted to increase membership in Phoenix by six additional State and local agency members. The FBI's National Infrastructure and Protection Center, or NIPC, created in 1998, serves as a focal point to warn against and respond to terrorist attacks that involve the use of the Nation's cyber network. The NIPC Key Asset initiative program identifies and attempts to protect against cyber attacks on major electrical, communications, water, and energy systems, as well as transportation hubs. The NIPC Infra-guard Program incorporates business, military, and government communities into a kind of cyber Neighborhood Watch network. The FBI has also developed a number of warning systems that are linked to the Arizona law enforcement and business communities. The National Threat Warning System is a classified, secure network that reaches 60 Federal agencies and their subcomponents, as well as all 56 FBI field offices and 44 legal attaches overseas. This information can then be disseminated to local and State agency personnel with appropriate clearances. Thirty- seven such warnings have been sent since September 11th. Unclassified threat information is nationally disseminated through the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System [NLETS]. The FBI has issued over 40 ``be on the lookout,'' or BOLO, alerts on the NLET system since September 11th, and thousands of security managers at U.S. commercial firms receive threat information through the FBI's Awareness of National Security Issues and Responses [ANSIR] Program. The FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Program fully integrates the FBI into Arizona's local and State emergency first-responder, and law enforcement community. The Phoenix FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Coordinator is Arizona's conduit to a myriad of national nuclear, biological, and chemical resources. Arizona's Weapons of Mass Destruction Coordinator works closely with the FBINQ and Counter Measures Unit and Hazardous Materials Response Unit to provide immediate expertise and links to subject experts in all related fields. The WMD Counter Measures Unit and HMRU also serve as a central resource point for Federal response teams in the event of an actual attack. They also have immediate liaison with agencies responsible for the administration of medical stores, portable medical facilities, and supporting material resources, such as tents, mobile labs, and storage buildings. The WMD Coordinator's position was created specifically by FBI Headquarters to insure that each FBI field office gave an immediate response to local and State resource needs in a WMD event. Due to time constraints, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation, and I look forward to any questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Churay follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, thank you very much. That is helpful. We now have Michael P. Austin, the director of the Arizona Division of Emergency Management. Mr. Austin. Mr. Austin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman. It is a pleasure to be here today to offer some comments to the committee. Mr. Horn. Is that mic enough to hear you? Sorry to interrupt. The Reporter. The mics on the table will not amplify. Mr. Horn. OK. Mr. Austin. Mr. Chairman, I will try to speak louder. My name is Mike Austin, and I am the Director of Emergency Management for Arizona. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today to offer comments on your efforts to hear interoperability and efficiency issues for the country. Arizona, as you heard the Governor say, has begun preparing for terrorism since 1997. Our strategy has been modeled after a consensus process that was articulated well by Dr. Faulkner at Harvard. He wrote a book, ``America's Achilles Heel,'' several years ago and then presented the key issues of that book at a conference that was held and hosted by the Department of Justice in Williamsburg, Maryland, in 1997. The State of Arizona attended that conference and took away from that some key points of emphasis that we needed to develop our Terrorism Task Force after in Arizona. Governor Hull emphasized that the key points for our Task Force would be to build a statewide response capacity; construct a first-responder response preparedness curriculum; and develop a robust health alert network. Prior to September 11th, the Task Force was primarily focused on administering the Department of Justice grant and working with our Federal partners on integrating the State, Federal, and local response capacity along those lines. After September 11th, you heard the Governor mention that she elevated that effort to the cabinet level and appointed several of her key policy advisors to fostering the Task Force through its reinvention. The Governor's key points of emphasis since then have been the driving force for developing a statewide capacity. Her first key point of emphasis is to build a first-responder capacity that is incredibly robust. Arizona's response has been built on a pre-September 11th threat assessment. Obviously after September 11th, our threat assessment methodology changed dramatically. We immediately recognized that first-responders need to build a response capacity that clearly enhances public safety and does not supplant current capacity. The methodology that we are considering is focusing on a model that you heard referenced by the city of Phoenix Mayor, Mayor Skip Rimsza, based on the urban search and rescue model, building a response capacity within the State of Arizona that is equipment typed, resource typed, that can be functionally deployed to an incident that occurs anywhere in the State. The critical element of that is that mutual aid needs to be thoroughly developed and thoroughly integrated throughout all of the different levels of government within Arizona, including the Federal level. There are Federal assets that need to be incorporated into mutual aid as well. Clearly, not all local governments are going to be able to develop a capacity for weapons of mass destruction incidents. It is probably not strategically valid to have every jurisdiction in Arizona have the maximum response capacity for any kind of incident. The response capacity that they have should be measured against the threat that they have and also measured against the kind of assets that are readily deployable within their region. To that end though, interstate and intrastate capacity must be developed. Not so much of a problem in Arizona, but I recently went to a similar hearing in Texas where it was pointed out that the Phoenix urban search and rescue team is much closer to El Paso than the Dallas urban search and rescue team or even the city of Austin response capacity. So if El Paso was to have an incident, then Phoenix is the closest big responder that would be able to go. The key component to mutual aid, of course, is interoperability, and that is a tough problem to address. The mayor spoke of the 800 megahertz issue, and in all of the Federal dollars that Congress is appropriating to Federal agencies to provide money to local jurisdictions to enhance their communications capacity, that is not going to be enough. We are still going to be short money in order to develop 800 megahertz capacity throughout the State of Arizona, especially in the West. The problem with 800 megahertz, it needs a robust repeater methodology in order to be able to have the interoperability that you would desire to have. The West, as you know, is much different than the East Coast where political subdivisions are small, and 800 megahertz carries easily across a county border. There are counties in Arizona that are much larger than Eastern States. In all of this, the Governor's role plays an important element. States play a key role. As you have heard, there are over 40 Federal agencies that offer weapons of mass destruction or terrorism assistance programs. It is essential that States be able to have funding in order to administer and to be able to provide the overhead integration capability so that all of these goals can be met. Providing money to first-responders is a great idea, and Arizona embraces that because we readily recognize that the first-responder capacity is essential to developing a statewide capacity. However, if all of that capacity is not integrated and a strategic investment is not made, then as Mr. Posner has pointed out, you will lose the effectiveness of all of the investment to some degree. So States play a vital role, and Congress needs to provide funding to States in order to accomplish that goal. The other issue that I want to bring forward today is the issue of outcome-based performance indicators for the accountability for that funding. That is a dynamic topic that needs to be thoroughly explored. Before strategic investment can take place, before funding can take place beyond a first-responder capacity, we need to be able to know what the outcome is. We kind of intuitively know what that is being better prepared. But realistically, what does that mean? And if we have 30 different funding streams or several different funding streams that have specific program indicators or outcome indicators, output indicators, if you will, for what that funding is being spent on, if DOJ has an accountability process and FEMA has an accountability process, then the administrative burden on the States would be excessive. We need to know, the Nation needs to have an outcome indicator or outcome based methodology that all of the Federal agencies will accept as a performance accountable measure for the funding that is coming through. The States can provide that methodology and can provide that reporting, but to have separate accountability outcomes for all of the different funding streams may be difficult to administer. So we do need to have outcome-based indicators, and they may be simple to arrive at. They may be outcome indicators that already exist: faster response times for first-responders, better water quality, things like that currently exist that we can report on. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity today. In the interest of time, I will end my comments. [The prepared statement of Mr. Austin follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, that is a very fine list that the Governor is implementing, and it is a good list that I am sure other States will try to follow. Our next presenter is David Englethaler, director, Arizona Department of Health Services and Response Office, emergency response coordinator for the Arizona Department of Health Services. Mr. Englethaler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Flake, members of the committee. Good afternoon. I am David Englethaler with the Arizona Department of Health Services. I am here to represent Dr. Catherine Eden, who is the director of the Department, who is sorry that she is not able to appear before this subcommittee. I act as the chief of the Department's Bioterrorism Office and as the emergency response coordinator for the Department. I am grateful to this subcommittee for the opportunity to speak here today. My hope is to give you the Department of Health Services' perspective on what we have been doing so far to prepare for a potential bioterrorism attack, as well as what we are currently working on. Prior to receiving the Centers for Disease Control bioterrorism funds, public health agencies at the State and county levels were not primary participants in bioterrorism discussions and really were not consulted within bioterrorism hoax responses, which has really been the primary response to bioterrorism prior to September 11th. The primary responders were often the law enforcement and HAZMAT agencies, which are not considered traditional public health partners. The Arizona Department of Health Services received a bioterrorism cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control in the fall of 1999. These funds allowed the department to establish its epidemic detection and response program. This program was centered around four main activities, those being emergency response planning, bioterrorism and outbreak surveillance and investigation, biological agent detection, and communications. The CDC funding provided the Department the opportunity to simultaneously begin to develop bioterrorism response capabilities, as well as to bolster the existing infectious disease surveillance and response infrastructure. Over the ensuing 2 years, the department established itself as a main component in emergency response, particularly in the area of bioterrorism. Close partnerships were developed with emergency management and law enforcement and other first- responders, and these relationships were tested and proven during the anthrax letter and hoax responses activities during last fall. Three Arizona cities were funded as part of the federally coordinated Metropolitan Medical Response System Program out of the Office of Emergency Preparedness. The Department has built close ties with these programs and remains involved with the development of their systems. The Department has also developed both intra and interdepartmental response plans for public health emergencies and produces statewide response plans for bioterrorism, pandemic influenza, and the national pharmaceutical stockpile, and has participated in various tabletop exercises. New disease and outbreak surveillance systems have either been developed on air in the process of development. The State Health Laboratory has increased its capacity to test for bioterrorism agents and has begun to provide Level A laboratory training. The Department has also increased the emergency health communications capacity in the State by providing county health departments and healthcare facilities with communications equipment, including satellite dishes and fax machines. The department has also begun development of an Internet based health alerting system that allows for secure high-speed communications between all emergency responders, and this system is being done in coordination with emergency management and law enforcement. All of these activities were made possible by the Centers for Disease Control bioterrorism cooperative agreement funds, and all were tested during September 11th and anthrax response activities. A review of response activities last fall has shown that the department was able to adequately respond to the public health needs of the State, although the Department's resources were taxed. The county health departments and the hospitals participated to some degree in emergency response actions, but they had not been previously able to develop strong bioterrorism response systems. It became obvious that an actual large scale bioterrorism attack would quickly overwhelm Arizona's, like most States', response capabilities. With the advent of the CDC bioterrorism cooperative agreement, supplemental funds and the HRSA hospital bioterrorism preparedness funds just recently this year, the State will be able to address the bioterrorism preparedness needs of the county health departments and begin to address the many needs of the hospitals in this State. Currently the Department of Health Services is vigorously developing work plans and applications for these grants. The Department is also making immediate funds available to all county health departments for each to hire a bioterrorism coordinator, as well as a communications coordinator to insure the development of local health emergency response plans and the integration of department directed health communications systems. The department has already met with the county health departments, and the bioterrorism and hospital advisory committees to provide input and direction on work plan development for both of these grants. The department believes that these funds will allow the State to go a long way to shoring up Arizona's public health infrastructure, while insuring the citizens of Arizona will be more adequately protected during catastrophic bioterrorism attack. An ongoing planning concern is the long-term maintenance of this increased public health infrastructure, particularly funding for new personnel. It is hoped that these current funding streams are, although immediate in nature, long-term in reality. I thank the subcommittee for your time and your kind invitation. [The prepared statement of Mr. Englethaler follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, thank you. That is helpful. I am going to take the privilege of one question and one question only, and then we can do it generally, but it comes to me, and I want it with this part of the record. You have got fine laboratories in the Public Health Department. Do you have a capacity of the nonprofits and the profits, the universities to do some of this laboratory work of let's say you had some kind of a plague and biological thing? Have you thought about getting those all connected in some way? Mr. Englethaler. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Flake, essentially those labs that you all listed are considered Level A labs, and those are labs that typically test for various types of disease agents that humans may get. They are all receiving training through our department to be able to do a certain level of testing for the various bioterrorism agents, at least some rule out testing, information on how to handle this material, how to send it to the State lab. The State lab is part of the overall laboratory response network in the country and is coordinating all existing testing during a bioterrorism event or hoax type situation. So we are working with those partners and providing education and training, too. Mr. Horn. Thank you. And now our last speaker for Panel 1 is Lieutenant Colonel Norman Beasley, the Assistant Director for Criminal Investigations of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Colonel Beasley. Lt. Col. Beasley. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Flake, it is, as the rest of the panel has said, a pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to testify on this truly probably the most vital topic that we are facing today in our society. What I would like to do real briefly, and I assure you real briefly, is talk a little bit about what the Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement offices are doing in Arizona, and then talk specifically about some homeland defense recommendations as it relates to the law enforcement function. The Department of Public Safety is designated under our emergency response plan as the lead State agency for terrorism. What this means is that we are responsible for coordinating all State assets that would be deployed to assist other State and local agencies during an act of terrorism. To accomplish this mission, as of September 11th, we have instituted our Domestic Preparedness Command. As part of that, we have opened a Domestic Preparedness Operations Center that until recently was staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by not only DPS investigative personnel, but personnel from other local law enforcement agencies. What this center handles is all requests for DPS assistance, information, and support, and any other State agencies' support, to include the Department of Health Services; is routed to this center, and then it gives us a point of central coordination. We also, during the anthrax scare, we took over the responsibility from the FBI to track all of our suspicious anthrax letters. If a local jurisdiction does not have the responses to respond to deal with a suspicious package, we will either have other local agencies respond or our own specialized response units will respond in conjunction with the FBI to deal with that particular package and then transport it to the Division of Health Services. We also coordinate the deployment of the National Guard Civil Support Team, which has been a very good asset for us, and is the National Guard's version of a weapon of mass destruction response team. The center also developed a secure Web site that provides real time intelligence, research and open source information to all law enforcement agencies, not only within Arizona, but throughout the country. It does provide written ready access to even Federal generated information. We have partnered with the FBI, and all of their teletype and information bulletins are placed on this Web site in a real time basis so that agencies in Arizona can go to this Web site and get the most current information that's available. In addition, our Intelligence Bureau generates daily threat advisories for all law enforcement agencies in Arizona. To date, we have generated well over 250 intelligence bulletins. We have forwarded 187 NLETS terrorist related teletypes to all law enforcement, and basically this becomes a check and balance. What we found initially is not every law enforcement agency was receiving the NLETS. So we have taken that responsibility to make sure that every agency gets this information. If they do not have NLETS capability, we use e-mail or the fax. Since September 11th, as a department we have been in a higher state of alert, and all of our specialized response units that would respond to a weapon of mass destruction or act of terrorism are on immediate mobilization status. Detectives and support personnel assigned to the division have been redeployed to conduct counterterrorist investigations in the area of intelligence and security operations. We work very closely on the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. Attorney's Anti-terrorism Task Force. We have also assisted the city of Phoenix with security at Sky Harbor Airport. In the area of personal protection equipment, we have been very fortunate. We are in the process of finishing up the purchase of a personal protective ensemble for every sworn officer, almost 1,100, that will give every officer in the field protection so that they could perform law enforcement functions within a chemical and biological environment. At the request of the U.S. Attorney's Office, we have partnered with the FBI in their expanded U.S. Attorney Task Force and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to provide liaisons in those areas of the State where there is not an FBI agent. Throughout our history, Arizona has enjoyed a very strong working relationship prior to September 11th, and this has been a building block not only with law enforcement, but with other public safety respond agencies. A lot of credit goes to the men and women out there in the field in Arizona who work daily on very hazardous things and work very well. We feel Arizona really is a model when you look at interagency cooperation. I want to publicly compliment the role of the U.S. Attorney and the FBI in providing that support to us. Now I wish to talk specifically on some homeland defense issues, some of which Mr. Posner touched on. In the area of intelligence sharing, there needs to be a mechanism in place to allow for the timely sharing of intelligence information between State, local, and Federal agencies. Currently there does not seem to be a clear vision on how this is going to be accomplished. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has a Web site on the FBI Law Enforcement Online. The U.S. Department of Justice RISS projects are attempting to use RISSNET as an interoperability between agencies. The problem with both of these systems is not everybody is on them. The FBI uses the NLETS system to disseminate information. Again, as we talked, not all law enforcement agencies have this. In addition to the vision on how are you going to get this information from the Federal level to the State level, there needs to be also a vision on specific tasking to State and local agencies. What does the Federal Government expect from us in the way of information, and a mechanism where those State and local investigative operations can input that data directly and receive information back. This vision should also look at developing and supporting systems, including software and hardware, that enhance the overall intelligence effort and makes this a true national intelligence program. It appears that the State law enforcement agencies can play a vital role, and I think Congress needs to look at funding for the State level law enforcement agency in the area of this intelligence dissemination system. The development of interoperable communications systems is a huge issue for first-responders, and that has to be a critical thing for Congress to look at. We had experience during the World Services. The military does have that capability to link various radio frequencies, and if this system could be made available to State and local agencies, as long as it was not cost prohibitive, that might be something to look at. In the area of training, much of the WMD training that we see today is not law enforcement specific. We would like to see that the training programs develop some form of law enforcement specific training that is geared to what the law enforcement officer is going to do in a WMD or a terrorist environment. That is primarily for the field officers. In closing, I really wish to thank Congress for their support in the Nunn-Luger initiatives and other initiatives because, quite frankly, without your support, Arizona could not be at the level of preparedness that we currently are. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Lt. Col. Beasley follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, I thank you for your fine presentation. I want to just answer one thing that I think is what you were talking about. We were very conscious of sharing law enforcement information with the FBI and other intelligence agencies to pinpoint a person in the city or the county or the State that would be cleared by the FBI so that you did not have a dope by mistake that was putting away marijuana or something and taking it out the cage himself. So I would just like to put this in the record because it is definitely with what you are talking about, which is the H.R. 3483, the Intergovernmental Law Enforcement Information Sharing Act of 2001. This is a letter signed by myself and Christopher Shays, the chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, and I gave this to the chairman of Judiciary and the James Sensenbrenner, Jr. He is very responsive to this, and we hope we can move that legislation in the next couple of months. And we know that is long overdue. So you hit a right thing, and I hope that the delegation all over the country agree with that, and I think they do. So that is very helpful now on Panel 1, and then we will move into Panel 2, and with the General Accounting Office usually we have the individual from the GAO we will at the end ask if we have missed something. That is where we are trying to get to between people. The Panel 2 is Robert Spencer, Jack Harris, Steve Storment, Tom Gallier, and Roy Stewart. OK. We do swear in our witnesses. So if you will stand and raise your right hand, we would appreciate it. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Horn. The Clerk will note that all five witnesses have affirmed. We will begin with Robert Spencer, the Director of Maricopa County Department of Emergency Management. STATEMENTS OF ROBERT SPENCER, DIRECTOR OF MARICOPA COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT; JACK HARRIS, ASSISTANT CHIEF, PHOENIX POLICE DEPARTMENT; STEVE STORMENT, ASSISTANT CHIEF, PHOENIX FIRE DEPARTMENT; TOM GALLIER, GENERAL MANAGER, WATER UTILITIES DEPARTMENT, CITY OF TEMPE; AND ROY STEWART, PRESIDENT, STEWART ELECTRIC & COMMUNICATIONS Mr. Spencer. Chairman Horn, Congressman Flake, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to present some local views on how the Federal Government's efforts are working for the response to terrorism and for searching for recommendations to make those efforts more efficient. My comments today will hopefully represent the local regional perspective. Some of the demographics of Maricopa County are included in the written statement that I have submitted today. I will not go into those too much right now. Mr. Horn. I might say all of your statements automatically go into the record when I call your name. Mr. Spencer. OK. Mr. Horn. We hope we can get these hearing records out in the next few months because otherwise we are losing problems and not taking your knowledge and spreading that around the country. So go ahead. Mr. Spencer. Included in that statement are many of the terrorism response capabilities that we have. Today I am speaking from the Maricopa County perspective, but it is also a partnership of 24 cities and towns and another 30 city-like, unincorporated population centers. So it is not just Maricopa County because we do work closely together with the cities and towns. In my short period of time here today for verbal testimony, I would like to convey shortfalls that we have in the system and some recommendations maybe on how to fix some of those shortfalls. The current money allocated by the U.S. Department of Justice has begun to put a dent in the overall needs for equipment. This money flow needs to continue. Restrictions on this money, however, need to be relaxed. We cannot purchase such items as bomb robots and rolling stock with this money. So even though we are buying a lot of response equipment, we are getting close to the dilemma as to how we will store it and quickly get it to the scene. Trucks and trailers must be purchased for such. Perhaps too much emphasis is sometimes placed on these funds for chemical and biological response, where maybe the most likely attack will be conventional explosives perhaps enhanced with nuclear materials. Therefore, equipment to interrupt or disarm bombs and equipment to rescue people in collapsed structures needs to be considered. When considering this and certain other sources of Federal funding for the local emergency response, the bureaucracy needs to lighten-up on some of the grant restrictions. Requiring local match can be difficult when dealing with funds at these levels. We cannot spend the money if we are required to match it, and we cannot come up with the qualified matches. Another shortcoming is that when moneys at these levels come into a smaller agency, such as mine, it can be very difficult to spend it within strict timeframes and without additional personnel to manage the funds. We want to get this money on the street as quickly as possible, but we also want to manage it professionally. Future money should allow for the hiring of a limited number of employees to keep track of the funds and to get those funds spent expeditiously. Now, the hospital system has come into this game late and is not yet able to provide the level of capability that we need. Even during normal times, our EMS and hospital system in the valley becomes saturated. If the large mass casualty incident was to occur during the 8 months out of the year when our population is at its highest, when our snowbird population has come down for their annual migration, we might be fortunate to find three critical care beds per hospital. May I suggest something maybe that may help nationwide to remedy the need for more critical care bed space? This may be maybe my highest recommendation today, for improving the hospital surge capacity preparedness, and that would be for the Federal Government to develop 12 nationally committed field hospitals which could be expeditiously shipped anywhere in the Nation within a 12 hour maximum timeframe. If you research some of the old civil defense things, we used to have those, and during the early 1980's they were dismantled, sent to South America, and so forth, and we no longer have that capacity. There has already been developed a similar capability in the national pharmaceutical PUSH package, and to a lesser degree the national DMORT system. The hospitals would be self- contained, would provide shelter, climate control, bed space, and medical equipment to handle up to 1,000 critical care patients. A trained group of professionals would accompany the hospitals during a deployment, to set them up and to provide additional medic support to the local effort. The mobile hospitals would go a long way in solving the surge capacity required in every locality in our Nation. The next shortfall that currently is being addressed, but needs to be expanded and implemented nationwide is the uniform medical surveillance system, and David Englethaler addressed that pretty well. But if a biological attack was to occur, we all know that recognizing the event early on is crucial preventing its spread. Funding to install the system in every hospital and in every emergency medical system is of paramount importance. The ability to quickly warn and advise the public is lacking. The old civil defense sirens are gone. The emergency alert system has replaced the earlier and older emergency broadcast system, somewhat debatable as to whether or not that was an improvement. Locally we have something called the media alert, which will blast fax the media with emergency information. The media alert was developed to supplement the EAS. We currently have funding also to develop a county-wide telephone calling system to provide emergency information to the populous. With all of these projects considered, I am still not comfortable that we have what we need in the way of warning and notification. The Federal Government has been working on legislation that requires a special electronic chip to be installed in all new radios and televisions. The chip would automatically turn on a device in which it was installed and tune it to receive emergency messages from the EAS. This would fill a huge gap, and it would be found where someone who is not in contact with a telephone or did not have their radio or TV turned on. The Federal Government should continue to look at this legislation and expedite it if it really does seem right. The final shortfall that can be predicted is the ability for the local emergency response agencies to sustain their terrorism emergency response capabilities. Most response equipment has a 5-year shelf-life. Of course, if it actually has to be used, it is immediately outdated. Phoenix, which is our original Nunn-Luger-Dominici Act city that was trained under those funds, has noted that their originally purchased equipment is going to start getting outdated. It has been that long. Although they have spent much of their own local money to sustain and build their capabilities, they cannot do so indefinitely. The Federal Government needs to come up with a plan and funding streams to provide the sustainability required in the future. Thank you, once again, for requesting our local input. I hope my recommendations can help you plan future legislation that will make local response to terroristic acts more effective and more efficient. [The prepared statement of Mr. Spencer follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, that's excellent, and your point on the hospitals and the need for tents and all of the rest of it, like MASH, maybe we can get some of it off the MASH set in Hollywood and solve some of these problems. But I will ask our staff to go now and get a real look of where are the various tents and all that could be moved rapidly across the country. So thank you for pointing that out. Jack Harris is the Assistant Chief of the Phoenix Police Department. Thank you for being here. Mr. Harris. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before this committee. It is nice going in the second group because I get to just review some of the main points that I wanted to present because most of them have been presented by other members from the other group. But let me say that one of the important points that we wanted to bring forth from the local jurisdiction is the topic of resource allocation and threat assessment. In the earliest stages of the development of the WMD program back in 1996, the initial grant funds that were going to be offered to the jurisdictions were disseminated based primarily on the 27 largest jurisdictions throughout the United States. That short list of 27 jurisdictions included the city of Phoenix. As time went on, the funding was presented at the State or the country level for disbursement, and the funds to not always get disbursed to the areas where the risk is the highest or where the population is the greatest. We would recommend that a review be made and go back to the original allocation alignment of looking at the jurisdictions that had the highest risk assessment according to the Department of Justice study and also where the largest masses of population were concentrated. The second area that I would like to talk about which has been discussed already is the policy for sustainment of funds. We get funds which we really appreciate to start program and to purchase equipment for programs that are essential to our response to a WMD situation, but we desperately need to be able to continue that funding to sustain that equipment and those programs beyond just the initial allotment to get the equipment. One example would be the purchase of, say, 2,700 gas masks to equip everyone with the Phoenix Police Department. That is extremely beneficial to us, and we appreciate that kind of funding. But along with that allotment comes training needs and OSHA standards that have to be met to continue to operate with that equipment. OSHA standards will require physical examinations, respiratory examinations for people who are disbursed with this equipment and also training in how to properly utilize the equipment. That funding can be very detrimental to a local agency, especially in these hard times economically. So we would, as some of the other members have, emphasize and reiterate that we need sustainment funds to keep those programs and equipment going into the future. The other topic that I wanted to discuss was the communications situation with the 700 megahertz bands. The city of Phoenix strongly urges continued review by the FCC and the congressional committee for appropriate distribution and organization of frequencies allocated for public safety uses. As I am sure you are well aware, in any type of major response to something like Oklahoma City, one of the first things that can cause problems for first-responders is the lack of communications. So we are asking that we continue to look at how those frequencies are allotted to both public entities and private entities, as well as to public safety organizations so that when we get to a scene, as the Twin Towers disaster, that we are able to continue to communicate without overlap or the frequencies and a problem with private industry frequencies not be available to us to be able to maintain the communications that are so necessary in a mass disaster like that. And with that, I would thank you for allowing me to present today and appreciate any consideration that you give to our requests. [The prepared statement of Mr. Harris follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. We now have your counterpart in the Phoenix Fire Department, Assistant Chief Steve Storment. And welcome being here. Mr. Storment. Thank you, Congressman Flake and Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to actually followup from what Mr. Spencer and Jack said as far as sustainability. We go back to 1997 being one of the first two dozen MMRSes that were put together to start looking at this issue, and as Mr. Spencer said, as we have gone along with this, we have made the equipment go as far as we can. We are now almost 6 years into that program, and using the FEMA USAR model that the mayor spoke about so well and the video, we have been a decade, and that has been my responsibility over the last actually 12 years, is that direct funding source to the local jurisdictions that provide the direct service to the customer. In the gap between our 22 points out of 22 points that we scored during the assessment in this last round of money, we got all of the points there were for the hazards and the risks associated. One of our gap problems is the FEMA USAR assets, some 60,000 pounds and some up to 100 people that you have got to move on best speed is a 6-hour window and up to 2 to 3 days to get wherever you are going. Those same folks, if it happens here, are tied up in the emergency response. One of the pieces for sustaining our effort here is daily operational sustainment that takes 6 to 8 minutes, not 6 to 8 hours. For us that would be a piece of equipment and staffing called heavy rescues that New York City had and other cities currently have that allows you to kind of bridge that gap between getting the rest of the stuff here and the rest of the Federal effort here that helps not only law enforcement, but also helps the fire department and certainly the customers in Phoenix. The other part of this sustainment effort is the track record. In fact, Mr. Posner said it very well, is the success stories. In the last 10 years, last 12 years of the FEMA USAR program, we have survived an IG audit, and that was quite interesting and we got through that. So those auditing pieces for the local jurisdiction are in place, and they work. We would like to see that directed to the city locale that have a proven track record to continue. With the efforts between the police department and the fire department and MMRS, we have been ranked at least by CNN in one article being the fifth best prepared in the Nation. What held us back was what Mr. Spencer talked about, was the hospital piece, which is enormously difficult and at least in what you read in some of the congressional notes and in the newspaper, the Health and Human Services piece with a block of money coming through to them would certainly be helpful. We would like to submit that our effort over the last number of years has been well measured. We know what the work is. Hence we know what the job needs to be done, and we know what the outcome is. We have deployed to five different locations. We have seen it from the ground up. On the frequency piece that Jack talked about, we would like to add another piece that is not quite so special to become routine, and that is use of satellite communication that is not impervious, but certainly more hardened than ground- lines and cell phone towers. And having been one of the first ones to Oklahoma, I can tell you it was a little unnerving to call to the National Response Center via pay phone in the Bell South building because there were no other lines available. So some interest in that to make it less special and more user friendly. I want to thank you for the opportunity to pass this along, and as part of the record, we made copies of a group that I got to work with back in Boston at the Kennedy School of Government, which I have had the privilege of sitting on their Executive Board for weapons of mass destruction issues, and there is a paper, which I am sure you guys have it, called ``Winning Plays, Essential Guidance from the Terrorism Line of Scrimmage,'' which is kind of a long way of saying, you know, we know what the issues are and we have offered some solutions to those issues, and those are kind of the solutions we share with you today. Thank you. Mr. Horn. Well, we would certainly want to have that document in the hearing record. If you could just read in the matter and give it to the court reporter, and we will have it in. Mr. Storment. The name of the paper that some 12 of us had put together as part of this charge over the last 3 years is coming out of September 11th, and it was actually done for a really good friend of ours who passed away in that, Jack Finney of the New York City Fire Department, and it is called ``Winning Plays, Essential Guidance from the Terrorism Line of Scrimmage,'' which basically represents the folks in the trenches, which are all of us. Mr. Horn. Sure. Mr. Storment. And the contributing authors were Peter Bearing, Paul Matascowsco, Hank Christian, myself, A.D. Vickery, and then the staff at the school there. And we have 100 copies back there, and I certainly have a copy here for the record. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, thank you. I am a graduate of the Kennedy school, too, so I am interested in what they are doing. I am glad to see there is practicality and not just theory. So thank you for changing my view of my alma mater. [Laughter.] So we now have Tom Gallier, the General Manager, Water Utilities Department, city of Tempe. Thank you. Mr. Gallier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congressman Flake. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to your subcommittee today. As I am sitting here listening to all of the previous speakers, I realize what we have been hearing from are our protectors and our rescuers in the event of a terrorist attack. I guess I am here to be the target, to represent the target community. Mr. Horn. You are right. You are right. We have not had a lot of testimony on the water resource situation. Mr. Gallier. It is a significant issue, albeit quiet one, in the background, and we appreciate that. I think an example of the whole thing in a nutshell is all of us have bottles of what we call ``Tempe tap'' here at our places, and I think all of us drink this water without a moment's hesitation or thought about its safety. And our goal essentially in the water industry is to make sure that continues to be the case. With the help of the good folks up here and with our representatives in Congress and other legislators and councils, hopefully we can continue that. I wanted to just briefly summarize the written comments that I have already submitted. It is important to remember that in the water industry, this issue did not begin for us on September 11th. By Presidential directive in 1996, as you are aware, there was an intergovernmental cooperative effort begun by Executive Order 13010. That was expanded in 1998 with the creation of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. Eight key critical sectors were identified in the country, water supply being one of those key sectors, and we have been working every since to try to develop programs that will allow us to protect our water systems around the country, not just in any particular area. One of the key elements of that is gradually coming to fruition now is a joint effort between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and one of our professional associations, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies. They have coordinated very closely with the FBI, with the Department of Energy's Sandia Labs especially, CDC, and many other Federal agencies to help fine tune our planning and preparation for potential terrorist acts. As you have mentioned, Mr. Chairman, at the beginning of the session, it is not a groundless concern, especially with what just happened a few weeks ago. Those of us in the water industry are very aware of that and very concerned. Some of the key points I would like to make is that as EPA and our own association are working together, one of their key outcomes they are working on is a system called the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or Water ISAC. Similar to some of the agency communication systems that you have heard spoken about earlier, but with a focus on water. That is a very important piece of communication technology that we need to be in place as soon as possible. Those agencies are working very closely on it. There are a few issues that still need to be ironed out, not the least of which, as was mentioned earlier. We have the same issue, and that is obtaining security clearances at the proper level for the proper people in our associations so that they can get the information from the FBI and other national security agencies as soon as possible and then adequately get that information out to the rest of us. There are some financing questions that need to be addressed as well. There has been funding provided to create this system. We are now struggling to figure out how to pay for it for ongoing O&M, as was mentioned here. We may do that by subscription, essentially charging all of us in the industry a certain amount to support that, and if that is what it takes, then we will certainly do that. Definitely more research and development is needed on the full range of water system security threats that we face now. EPA's ongoing efforts have been helpful. They have allocated or potentially allocated $15 million this year in their proposed budget or next year's budget. That is a good start. We would like to see that continue and even be increased. There are efforts by a number of Federal research agencies and the American Water Works Association Research Foundation that are using some of the funds from the past and will be using those that are available this year. I am participating on a Professional Advisory Oversight Committee for an international study that is looking at one aspect of that right now with representatives of Portland, Oregon water authority and also the city of New York. So we are not just looking nationally at this issue, but outside of our boundaries as well. Governor Whitman's announcement last Tuesday that EPA is releasing $90 million in emergency grant funds directly to water systems to help pay for vulnerability assessments is greatly appreciated. I was notified by phone last week by EPA Region IX in San Francisco, and I appreciate the direct contact. As was mentioned here, I appreciate the fact that funding is coming directly to us. We do not have to go through three or four layers of bureaucracy. We appreciate the efforts that EPA is also making with Sandia Labs. DOE's research arm at Sandia is doing tremendous work for the water industry. They are beginning to plan now some train the trainer sessions, which a number of professionals in the industry can then use to come back and disseminate that knowledge very rapidly. Those sessions will begin next month. Already the city of Phoenix and the city of Tempe have volunteered in this area to provide space for that training process to occur when that is complete. Our city's planning efforts are coordinated, of course, by our fire and police departments, as Phoenix's are. We work closely with county, State, and Federal emergency planning and response personnel. We have had a number of emergency drills, just like most cities. Our latest one was last October, I believe, and that scenario was based on a biological or chemical terrorist attack at a sporting event, which we have some experience with sporting events in Tempe. Individually, our facilities are upgrading our electronic and physical security systems. We are reassigning staff to security planning and patrol duties. The leader in the valley, without question, has been the city of Phoenix Water Services Department. I believe they deserve special recognition for their efforts in this area. We are also, like everyone else, revisiting all of the design, construction and operating standards, plans, and assumptions because we realize now that this is not a short- term issue. It is long-term. We have to rethink the way that we not only deliver our water services to our customers, but also how we bring the water into our facilities, how we treat the water, and then how we distribute it and store it. The ultimate question that we face in the water industry is what is the appropriate level of security that is needed. How much of our limited financial resources should we be prepared to expend on security when we as an industry also face significant costs to meet other, ever more stringent State and Federal water quality requirements? As an example, in Tempe's case, the new arsenic standards that were recently issued have very little effect on us. Our surface water supplies were blessed to have supplies that are very low naturally in arsenic. Many of the cities around us, however, rely on substantially more groundwater than we do that does have high arsenic levels. There is at least one city in the valley that I know of that is facing at least $60 million in capital construction to be able to meet those standards. I am not saying that to question the validity or the necessity of those standards. I think that is important for public health, but it is important to remember that the water industry is facing challenges on several fronts at the same time. So, of course, like everyone else, we are asking for more money. That usually comes through the form of the State revolving loan fund program, and again, to echo what Mayor Rimsza said earlier, and so did my counterparts here in local government, frequently portions of those funds when they are available have set-asides for rural areas where the level of income is much lower and the need is great. We need to look at security issues from a different perspective. The targets primarily for terrorist activity are going to be the larger urban areas. I would only ask that you remember it is not just one particular city in an urban area. Phoenix is like other major urban areas around the country, and within this area, we have eight cities with populations greater than 100,000. So we would suggest that be looked at as a metropolitan area basis, and that a set-aside in the Federal SRF be made of about 15 percent, if possible, for metropolitan areas around the country so that we have a quicker access to that money that we can use for security improvements and other things that we will need. With that, I will end my statement and be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Gallier follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, thank you very much. That is helpful, and we will get back to it in the question period. I have asked Representative Flake to introduce our last presenter. Mr. Flake. Well, thank you, Congressman Horn and Mr. Chairman. I wanted to introduce Mr. Stewart. I have been familiar with him and his company recently. Just to put it bluntly, I have been very impressed with what they have done. Right after September 11th, Mr. Stewart got a call saying things were needed in New York, particularly to restore cellular phone service there, and within hours he put together a team of eight men and drove, I think it took 49 hours or so. Mr. Stewart. About 48 hours, yes. Mr. Flake. And with two trucks and all of the equipment, eight men, driving across the country, arrived, and it was fairly chaotic, as I understand, for quite a while there, but within 4 days working nonstop, they were able to restore cellular service there by putting up some microwave facilities, and I just want to commend him publicly for that and his company for what he did, and I look forward to his testimony. Mr. Stewart. Thank you, Congressman. Thank you, Chairman. I guess probably what I will do is probably create more questions than I have answers or needs from the private sector. We have listened all day to these fine organizations that are established, and they do a fantastic job. We have watched them in New York City on September 11th when we were back there. Like the Congressman said, we got a call and asked us to go back to New York and deliver some equipment back there and see if we could not aid them in bringing a cellular system back up for one of our carriers that we worked for here in the valley. No information other than just what we could get off the media, over telephones as we were traveling. We put a team together pretty rapidly. What do we need when we get back there, like our urban response teams, so organized and have everything ready to go to deal with the actual scene itself? But when they break it, we have got to go fix it, and as we talked today, everybody is very concerned with this 800 megahertz, which we are working on that presently right now. Communications play such a vital role to America. A question to you is: What would have happened in Manhattan if Wall Street would have opened up the next morning business as usual? The reason why they could not, they could not communicate with the world. Our business today communicates globally. It is a very, very vital role in emergency tasks, in our business, in our commerce today around the world. It is a very complex system, and 99 percent of it is operated and owned by publicly held companies, and privately held companies like myself that design it and build it and maintain it for these companies with all of the large ones. But like Congressman Flake said, we got a call, and we headed for New York. We had never been asked to do this before. We never responded to a disaster. So we got back to New Jersey. There we found out there was no land-line base available, and what their cell system operated on was a hard-line system. Copper wire was the way they hauled their cell sites around. Out here in the West we hurl microwave shots around here because we're so sprawled across the State that we do not have copper; we do not have hard-lines. So we use microwave. Everywhere you look there is a microwave dish hauling our systems around the country. So when we got back there, all of the copper lines had been destroyed in the neighborhood of literally millions when the World Trade Center went down. So we went into their command center for the customer that we were working for, and it was somewhat chaotic, but this had never happened in America before. So, yes, it kind of devastated everybody. We went to work the first day, went into the city; finally got into the city. Access was an absolute nightmare. Here was a bunch of guys from Arizona. Who are these folks? What are they going to do with the microwave specialists? Well, we did have enough thought that we said, OK, let's take everything but the kitchen sink when we leave. We took all of our spectrum analyzers, all of our equipment to sweep cell sites, to install, all of the materials that we could haul in our service trucks that we pulled the equipment back to New York with. Sitting in the war room, we finally started calling it, we had a map of Manhattan, and we had an entire system that was completely dead. There was some movement being made in it, some additional switching facilities that had been hauled into the area and were being tapped onto the switch, but nothing could be brought back up because the local phone company was trying to bring copper back up. Well, copper was not coming up, and there is a great deal of it that will not be up for several more months. So then we sat down, and we sat actually on a chalkboard in general conversation. How are we going to put this system back together? That is when we came up with, well, we do not know your system, but you have got cell sites here and here and here. Do you have access into these buildings? We can put you a microwave shop. We can haul it back through what we call a backbone system, a trunking system, fire these cell sites up to these various building tops and carry it out of the city that way and get you to a switching facility. Sure, that will be fine. So we went out to try to accomplish that task, and we ran into building owners that asked why we were there, what we were going to do, who was going to insure this installation while we are there, what is it going to look like on our building, is it really necessary, where are your credentials at, problem after problem after problem. It got to the point where we were afraid to leave what we had called the soft-line with our trucks and our equipment because we were afraid we would not get back in. Sometimes they would let us in; sometimes they wouldn't. We'd have to go around to another. Obstacle after obstacle that we ran into, with government agencies sitting there doing their job, but not allowing us to move freely through the city. A job that should have taken probably 1\1/2\ to 2 days is what we would have done here in the Phoenix metropolitan area with our highrises. It wound up taking us about 4 days. We commandeered a broken grocery cart, a hand-truck we found behind a building, and that is the way we moved around through the city, like a bunch of thieves actually. So I guess in closing, like I said, my story is probably going to have more questions and more problems because this is the first time we have been involved in this. What do we need to do to organize this? We have just a multitude of talent across the United States that is going to have to respond to these needs. When Phoenix goes down, they are going to have to call us because we built it. We will play a large role in the 800 megahertz for Phoenix fire and police and civil defense here in Phoenix. What are we going to do to organize that so that we know where our resources are? We know where the fire department is. We know where HAZMAT is at. We know where the Phoenix Police Department is. We know where DPS and all of these agencies are. But who knows where our talent is to bring this stuff back up when it is actually needed? Who knows where Roy is at? And his staff are absolutely the best of the best when it comes to microwave people. Who knows where they are and do we need them? So I will close this on the last and try to wrap this thing up, but I do appreciate you guys giving us the opportunity to come and bring some of the problems that the private sector had in New York City and probably some that may occur again, but maybe with the help of this committee right here and these hearings, we might be able to start reaching out and saying, ``Hey, maybe we do have a problem here. Let's organize this and see if we cannot get it together.'' Thank you so much. [The prepared statement of Mr. Stewart follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Horn. Well, we thank you. That is a real fascinating story. Has that been picked up by the press? Mr. Stewart. Yes, sir. Mr. Horn. Do you have some questions you would like to ask first? Mr. Flake. Yes. Mr. Horn. Please do. Mr. Flake. Just a few. Mr. Stewart, given what you encountered there and kind of taking from the first panel, Mr. Posner talked about strategies to coordinate, some of the problems as we have heard are resource problems and others are communication and coordination. On the communication and coordination, a national strategy as opposed to a Federal strategy is what has been posed. How do you people who work with it on the ground, how do you see that playing out? The notion is that you do not rely on the Federal Government coming in and posing a solution and saying that this agency with this agency or you are going to be supporting it with this agency or that. What would be the appropriate vehicle, an association of State legislators or some association of police forces out there? I guess I will close it, if you could answer that briefly, your thoughts about a national strategy as opposed to a Federal strategy and how that might help on the ground in a situation because we have had a real world situation that Mr. Stewart has encountered; how that would have perhaps helped in that regard. Mr. Posner. I have been impressed hearing just about the vitality of our system. I mean, the Federal Government, for example, has not recognized the security problems of the water systems, but you have the Association of Water Resource Managers that is really taking a proactive role in this system. I think we are seeing a lot of that in the emergency management community, how with some support from FEMA the State and local managers are taking this problem on themselves and developing professional standards, certification procedures. I am not familiar with the communications area, but somehow being able to--and I am reading the really wonderful report that this plays, this effort that you worked on together, and I am familiar with some of the other people there, and they are all first rate people, and you have really laid out an agenda that really does not just focus on the Federal Government. I mean, certainly we can facilitate, but it is, I think, a responsible strategy to say that this is really national problems and not Federal, and part of that is getting private sector. Part of it is getting the professional association officials together to really do something about some of these problems. Mr. Flake. Specifically, Mr. Stewart, if you were to encounter a situation like this again, say we had a similar attack in Chicago or L.A. and you were called to go in again. What do you think we have learned already that would make it easier for you to get around and do in a day what you had to spend 4 days doing? Mr. Stewart. Well, after myself and my staff got back to Chandler there to our office, we started having general conversations, and it just about has not stopped to this day. What if, what if, what if? Because nobody knows anything about us, we started kind of putting together our own plan. What if we had some kind of an org. chart put together around the country that says, OK, Stewart Electric & Communications. They live in Chandler, Arizona, and we do happen to know for their staff. Now, I went out and bought five cows since New York. On my own I have spent several thousands and thousands of dollars to put together a team of emergency what we call cows, cells on wheels, which is what we pulled back to New York and which New York is operating heavily on right now. Mr. Flake. I thought you were talking about cattle. Mr. Stewart. Yes. Mr. Flake. What in the world? Mr. Stewart. A cow. I used that so easy. It is a cell site on wheels. It is a portable cell site, and we hauled those back to New York. And so we went to the effort or the expense now that we have actually purchased five, and we have them sitting in our yard right now just in the event that these things or another situation like this was to happen again. You talk about your water system. A lot of the water systems and pumps, sewer treatment plants and what have you, they are all hauled or a lot of them are hauled via some type of broad band radio system. You can simply take and knock one of those radios off the ground, and until a serviceman gets out there and manually opens or closes that pump, you have got a major problem going on. Our communications within our own home jurisdiction, Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe, this entire State right here relies so heavily. If you want terrorist activity to really become a pain in your side, let him start working on our communication system, and he will drive us crazy. You can already see what is going on with our Internet with the hackers and viruses going around there. It is very simple to get to these systems. They are on mountaintops. They are on rooftops. They are sitting out on a pump station for the CAP with a little Aggie sitting out there that controls that entire station out there. What we need is once this happens and our terrorist activity may become small like this to where it's just an ongoing nagging, going on type of situation to where we know where we can get the resources and we know where we can find the people that can respond to that. A pre-qualifying list. Take my key employees, the people that would really count. The eight that I had back in New York are the best of the best, like I said, when it comes to telecommunications or microwave and analyzing problems with taking data and moving it through air. I have got eight individuals that just are second to none. Those people to be qualified and somebody to know where they are if they are needed. Something simple as starting at the ground roots there and start building a private sector because we are the one that is going to have to fight this war when it goes on. Mr. Flake. Just to followup on that, Mr. Spencer, we talked about problems of communication and coordination between the Federal Government and the State, the State and the local agencies. Is there sufficient coordination and cooperation right now between local agencies and the private sector, as Mr. Stewart who actually will come in and be partners with various governments in this? Is there need for that? Mr. Spencer. There is much more that could be done. We work real closely with the utilities, but I did not know of his existence. You know, we are aware of cell on wheels, but we would have gone to the telephone company to find those, and hopefully you are on their list. Mr. Stewart. And whether that list would ever get back to somebody like you guys, you know, it is hard to tell. That is why I keep kind of going back to an Arizona, if you will, or national and expanding from there. Some type of org. chart. If we have a major disaster in telecommunications, let's go over here in this category over here and let's start seeing who does this and who can put response teams together on that. Now we have got DPS and the military and everybody to protect us and secure that area off, but we have got to get that thing rebuilt. Well, just an awfully lot of our communications throughout this country and the world is built by the private sector. The systems that we have here in Arizona we know more about than the people that have their name on them because we build them. We maintain them and service them for those companies. Mr. Posner. If I could just maybe add one other point. Mr. Flake. Go ahead. Mr. Posner. In response, Congressman Flake, to your concern, there is a national infrastructure protection council that is established under Presidential directives, and they do have subcommittees of working level groups that are supposed to be pulling together exactly what you are saying at the national level, recognizing like we did in Y2K that this is not a Federal--it is a national problem, and that the private sector really commands the key resources. They are supposed to be pulling together strategy, No. 1, to map out who does own this problem. Who are the key actors and what are the strategies? You know, that is something that, again, in the communications area across the board there are efforts that are underway to do that, I believe. We have not looked at that particular sector, but you are pointing up an important---- Mr. Stewart. But I believe that is starting being built at the State level and then growing to the national level, but in order for it to happen, we have got disaster recovery programs that were put out for our wireless communications field industry several years ago, which I was very proud to work on one with one of our carriers and played a major role in developing and designing and being ready to respond to them. People tend to go to sleep. People tend to forget about this. So that if we do not go from a Federal level and maybe a Federal mandate and then start at the State level and have it grow and then connect to a national and then a Federal level, as Americans we get kind of comfortable with the fact that, well, that happened in New York and now we have got baseball season getting ready to start. We get lax. I do not want to see this after what we went through in Manhattan for 4 days of hell back there. If this should happen again, we should be a lot more prepared in the private sector than what we are right now. Mr. Horn. Let me pursue another question that is, I guess, three decades ago. I was a university president, and we participated in the emergency situations because we had our own State police force on the campus. It was a campus the size of Arizona State University, and you have got a very fine university. And we did these exercises, and the problem was nobody could communicate with anybody because we did not have the frequencies. At that time it was all on the East Coast, and you had to squeeze them out in order to have our people. Now, our first hearing was in Nashville, Tennessee a few weeks ago, and part of the situation was in response to a question like this, that the military helicopters, and they have a major I think 82nd Airborne fairly near, and the civilian helicopters had a completely different frequency. They could not talk to each other. We went through the trauma sections of the hospital there, and Vanderbilt, just like Arizona State, is a very fine university. But if you cannot get the communications out there, it is just a blind corridor, and I wonder what it is doing at either the national level, the State level or trying to get--what do you need? I saw here interoperability of radio communications and the 700 public safety spectrum. Is that so difficult? Are we running out of some of those frequencies and all or levels of frequency? And how do we deal with that? What have we dealt with in the State of Arizona from Flagstaff to there? Mr. Harris. I do not know about communications, but locally we are switching over to the 800 megahertz band so that we would be able to communicate with fire. Mesa, Tempe, Scottsville, Phoenix, all of those agencies would be on the same frequencies, and they would be able to communicate at least locally. Second, 700, as I understand it, is the next group of bands of frequencies that are becoming available. When you get into that group of bands, it is not that there is not enough bands for public safety and for the private sector. It is how they are arranged. And, again, I am not an expert in this area, but when they are not arranged appropriately, you can get cross-talk between the bands, and it stops the communications. So it is more when we look at the FCC as I understand it. It is not in how many bands there are, but in how they are arranged that is going to be critical so that we do not have that cross-talk with private bands. Mr. Horn. Could it be jammed also easily or just the cross- talk does it? Mr. Harris. You are out of my area of expertise already. Mr. Spencer. Just experience, it is kind of a good news/bad news type thing. The 800 megahertz trunking looks like it has the potential to tie a lot of us together, and on the fly we can create talk groups almost, you know, within minutes. The bad news is that it does not work well in buildings. I am not sure what they were using in New York City, but I understand within the Towers they lost communications on the radios, and I am not sure if it was because of the frequencies, but it is definitely a problem within our own command center. Our EOC, we have to have an internal repeater just to be able to make the frequency go out. Second of all, there are certain cell phone companies that have close frequencies that interfere with it. I know, I believe, it was Phoenix PD was on a SWAT mission and they had to pull back because they lost communications because they were close to one of these cell sites and it blanked out their 800 megahertz. Mr. Horn. Yes. We were told that there was a real problem where cellular phones just went out. So is there in between the fire departments, the police departments, the States, and the FEMAs--do you know anybody who is working on this or are they just saying, well, it is a bad problem? Mr. Spencer. Well, on the interference side of things, they are looking at it. I think part of the problem is that particular cell company that is having the problems, they are also within that close band, and that is where you are getting some of that crossover. In this area, it is kind of a catch as catch can. As soon as the cities and towns switch to 800 megahertz, there is a wireless committee that is somewhat organizing it, and again, there is a bit of a problem. Some of them have bought the analogue system and the newer systems coming on are digital. So the older analogue systems are now going to have to somehow convert or get translators that will turn that into digital so that they will continue to talk on that and be able to talk to each other. It is as close, I think, as we have ever gotten to something that will help us all talk together. Another system that is out there that I know our local National Guard's community support team has is a magical band that will tie some of these frequencies together, but I think it is limited to two or three frequencies at a time. It will make it so that you are able to talk to each other as though you are on the same frequency. Expansion of that type of equipment might not hurt. Mr. Horn. Staff tells me that the Federal Aviation Administration has instituted a policy that would free up the space for emergency officials, while limiting cell space for the public. Oh, OK. It is the Federal Communications Commission. That is what I thought. So that would make some sense. Do you think so? Mr. Harris. I have been told the FCC is also conducting hearings on the problem. Mr. Horn. Good. Mr. Stewart. We will make one suggestion that 800 megahertz band be looked at very, very close. Mr. Flake. I had one question for Mr. Gallier. Initially right after September 11th, we were warned of chemical and biological attacks and were told the water systems were certainly vulnerable. Later on there seem to be kind of a pull-back, that, no, there's really nothing that they can do. It would be very difficult and they would have to be very, very sophisticated at that to use the water systems to terrorize. What have we settled on? How big of a threat is it? You mentioned that you have to weigh or balance your meter resources to protect against it. How much of a threat do you think it is in Arizona? Have we got enough water to matter here? Mr. Gallier. Congressman, I think it is kind of a Gordion knot, if you will. I think the initial statements that said there was little risk were really based on an assumption that an attack would occur within the raw water supply itself or at the point where the raw water supply comes into the treatment facility. You have facilities like mine that treat approximately 50 million gallons of water a day per facility. It would take a lot of poison or biological toxin to have an impact, more than most people could really do effectively. There are other risks though. A number of groups are beginning to raise the issue of storage, large quantity storage of high pressurized gas cylinders filled with chlorine gas. It's actually in a liquid form because it is under so much pressure. Thousands of pounds of chlorine are stored at water and waste water facilities throughout the country, throughout the world. All of our systems of protection are designed essentially around protection against human error or accidental release. They are really not adequately designed; the systems are not adequately designed to protect against a significant terrorist attack. That is one issue that I think as an industry we are very concerned about. That does not directly affect the quality of the drinking water. It directly affects the areas immediately around any facility where they are stored. So there is a significant issue there. The other potential is the issue of, frankly, contamination happening intentionally within the distribution system. As Chairman Horn indicated at the beginning, that is a major concern that we have in the industry, and I am going to be honest. We do not have clear-cut answers to that right now. My suggestions that significant additional research and development are needed are really focused on that area as much as anything else. So when someone talks about dumping water in a canal or poisons in a canal or into a lake or some other water source, that is really not where the threat is. The threat is in the distribution and, alternately, the physical threat of what happens if the hazardous chemicals that are used in some places in the treatment system are released. Mr. Spencer. We actually ran an exercise where we modeled a plume from a chlorine tanker at a water treatment plant, and it put out a plume over ten miles long, over a mile wide, and that was at what is known as an IDLH level, or immediately dangerous to life and health. If you are in it a very short-time, you have permanent damage. So it is a huge potential that is out there for an attack. Mr. Gallier. And I would add in most of those cases, there are technological alternatives available, but they are not cheap. To give you an example, I have done some back-of-the- envelope work with our engineering staff and others to look at what it would take to convert our two water treatment plants. It is just one city serving approximately 170,000 people. We could be looking at costs as high as $30 million in capital to do that, and then when you look at the operating component of that, I pay for chlorine right now roughly $50,000 to $60,000 a year on average. It is not a high dollar item within our budget. But to replace that with some of these other alternatives, you would easily be talking in excess of $1 million a year. You start multiplying that through other threats that we may face, that is an issue that we have to be concerned about. Mr. Horn. I am told that there are some processes and chemicals that could get the poisons out of water and get purification is that pretty well known throughout those who have your responsibility on the protection of the water resources? Mr. Gallier. Well, Congressman, that depends on what the threat would be, what type of chemical or biological contaminant would be in place. Some are relatively easy to deal with. The organism itself might be very hazardous, but the treatment necessary to render it harmless is relatively straightforward. Some have a minor health effect, but are very difficult to control. There are many, many, many variables that we have to deal with. Mr. Horn. When you get done cleaning up Arizona, you should probably come to Washington, DC. The Corps of Engineers puts in absolutely wonderful purified water, and it goes through a distribution system of the city of Washington which we all have given up on, and we just now--well, Speaker Gingrich, when he got into power, he said, ``You can get the bottled water for your constituents, but you cannot really drink it.'' But we all drink it. So that is a problem, too, in terms of distribution systems. Mr. Gallier. Distribution system is a key part of this. Mr. Horn. Yes. Mr. Gallier. That is why it is very important that the research and development that is ongoing right now continue. I do not think there is a single problem we face that there is not a fix for. In some cases it is going to take some time and in other cases it is going to take time and money. But there are fixes out there for all of these issues, and there is no reason to believe that there is any substantial risk of that type of attack at this time. But it is important to recognize that the risk is there, and we do need to recognize it, and we need to deal with it. Mr. Posner. Mr. Chairman, if I could just add. Mr. Horn. Yes. Mr. Posner. The discussion here is illustrative of some broader concerns we have addressed, which is that homeland security and the costs of paying for what we are dealing with are substantial and really kind of bump up against other priorities. And we have talked about the need for agencies. The Coast Guard faces this, for example. They have had a long established mission to trace down drug dealers and others dealing with public safety. They are having to really rethink because they have a totally new mission protecting the ports now. They have had to pull their boats back in, and they have to face some painful tradeoffs because money is not unlimited, and particularly in State and local budgets, or the Federal level. How do you do that? How do you go about reassessing your priorities? And that may be the process that ultimately water systems have to rethink because you have many standards that you are trying to comply with for safe drinking water, and now you have this new set of demands. I know that we challenged OMB and the Federal agencies to think more explicitly about that. Mr. Horn. How realistic a threat would airborne toxins be to the area? And reports have confirmed or I do not know if they have really confirmed, but they have been considered that the terrorists of the September 11th situation explored that option. Mr. Gallier. I probably would not be the appropriate person to try to answer that because that is a different medium entirely. Mr. Horn. Not just allergy off the trees, but if they are put in dust cropping and all of that. Mr. Gallier. Oh, you mean an airborne addition? Mr. Horn. Yes, airborne. Sorry. Mr. Gallier. I see. You know, we have had some concern about that in the industry. There were reports early on of crop dusters going in low over reservoirs, and then combined with reports that some of the Al Qaida cell members were trying to get information on how to operate crop dusters and all of that. Personally I think that if the use intended would be to contaminate a water supply, I think the risk is pretty low, again, for that same reason. It is the old dilution is the solution to pollution argument. It works the same for poisons and toxins. You would have to have a very, very high amount, a large quantity amount relative to the amount of water that is being treated in the system in order to have an effect. But if the goal is to introduce fear into a population, which is one of the major goals of terrorism, then you could have some effectiveness in doing that. Anything you do to cause fear in a population is going to have some benefit if that is your goal. As I said at the beginning, people want to be able to depend on their water being safe when they open the tap, and right now it is. Our goal is to make sure that it continues to be. Mr. Horn. Any other questions? Well, let me just say we thank you very much for this Friday that I am sure your families are waiting for you at home. I want to thank the people that helped us prepare this. Steve Jewett, the Governor's Homeland security coordinator. Marcus Aurelius, the emergency management coordinator for the city of Phoenix. Shannon Wilhelmsen, director of government relations for the city of Tempe. Amber Wakeman, the government relations management assistant for the city of Tempe. Skip Neeley, communications and media relations for this fine city. Greg Wolfe, communications and media relations for the city of Tempe. Josh Lader, the executive assistant to Office of Mayor Neil Giuliano's office. Mark Minieri, intern, Office of the Mayor. And the court reporter today is Allison Long, and we thank you. It has been a long afternoon, and we are delighted to have you here. Our own staff, Mr. J. Russell George is staff director and chief counsel, back of me. To my left, Henry Wray is the senior counsel. And Justin Paulhamus is majority clerk. Other congressional staff are Steve Voeller, chief of staff to Congressman Jeff Flake. Pat Curtin, office manager for Congressman John Shadegg. We appreciate all of the help that we got. So thank you all, especially when you have come both close and far. So if you have any thoughts, write us a letter. We will put it in the hearing. What we are trying to do is when we get to about maybe 15 or 20 cities, we want to put that in a report, and hopefully it will be useful. It is not going to be useful unless we have your ideas because we do not know all of this stuff, and we do not pretend to. That is why we hold these hearings, and so we would welcome any thought you have got. You might say, ``Oh, well, they already know that.'' Well, often we do not know it. So we would like your help. With that, I thank Representative Flake for being here. I have seen him on the floor. He is a great representative for the State of Arizona. He is an eloquent speaker, more than most of his class certainly. We will not tell the rest of them that. [Laughter.] But it is true. I have watched him do these things, and so you have got a good voice in Washington, and we are glad to have him here. Thank you for taking all of the time when he could be shaking constituents' hands. So thank you. We are adjourned. [Whereupon, at 3:45 p.m., the subcommittee meeting was adjourned.] -