CIA exercise turns up security concerns at N.C. water plant

The Elizabeth City water plant is vulnerable to attack, most likely from vandals or someone with a grudge rather than from terrorists, a team from the CIA training base at Harvey Point found last week.

The specific weaknesses remain secret.

"Nobody is supposed to know about it," said Pasquotank County Sheriff Randy Cartwright.

The assessment served as a training exercise for the CIA and an alert to local officials, said Paul Fredette, director of Elizabeth City public utilities. There was no imminent threat, he said.

But an assessment was needed just in case.

Elizabeth City's water system of about 7,000 customers was rated as a low priority for a terrorist attack, Fredette said.

The CIA team spent about three hours evaluating the 83-year-old water plant using a rating system called CARVER, an acronym for criticality, accessibility, recoverability, vulnerability, effect on population, and recognizability.

This is not the first time the local system has been tested. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government required the more than 53,000 community water systems to be assessed for vulnerability and reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The three primary threats to public water systems, the EPA says, are chemical or biological contamination, explosions or a cyberattack on the control system.

Elizabeth City's EPA report remains secret, Fredette said.

Completed in 2004, the report had to be delivered by courier in a brown envelope without identification to the EPA, he said.

In the EPA report, every well, pump and tank was accounted for, he said. Many of the same weaknesses discovered then also were found last week.

Making the facility less vulnerable would be expensive and i n some cases impossible, Fredette said. Because the strike probability is low here, the EPA did not insist that changes be made.

A new fence and a remote-controlled gate are the most obvious security upgrade s to the property. Before 9 /11, visitors could drive up to the front door. Now, plant employees have to punch in a key code on a device outside the gate or punch a call button so the gate can be opened from the inside.

Jeff Hampton, (252)338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com