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Freedom of Information

Terror Attacks Raise Info Access Issues

The federal government went into a virtual lockdown of online information about environmental hazards the week of October 8, 2001, as the nation went to war against terrrorism.

- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission shut down its entire Web site on October 11, putting up an announcement that it was reviewing all material on the site.

- The Army Corps of Engineers the same week took offline its National Inventory of Dams, and undertook review of other information it publishes online about the nation’s water infrastructure.

- The Environmental Protection Agency, a week earlier, pulled from the Web RMP*Info, which gives some data on chemical and industrial plants that could pose risks of poisoning, explosion, or fire to surrounding communities. The data that were online had already been sanitized to prevent use by terrorists.

- The Transportation Department’s Office of Pipeline Safety pulled maps of the nation’s oil and gas pipelines.

- The Centers for Disease Control pulled a report on vulnerabilities to chemical terrorism.

- The justification for the blackout was that the information could help terrorists find the most vulnerable targets in the nation’s infrastructure.

"This has received so much publicity that we decided to take [the information] down," Jim Makris, Environmental Protection Agency emergency preparedness coordinator told the Washington Post. "We’re trying to decide whether it was the proper thing to do."

But many of the facilities under the blackout had for years been the subjects of media and public criticism for their safety performance, and the blackout raised issues about how they could be held accountable and whether vulnerable populations would even know that they were at risk.

For example, a pipeline fire that killed 12 near Carlsbad, New Mexico, in August 2000 prompted a number of media reports, including one published July 22, 2001, in the Austin American-Statesman, which pointed to "lax oversight" by states and the federal Office of Pipeline Safety, and a "culture that allows pipeline companies to regulate themselves." http://www.austin 360.com/aas/specialreports/pipelines/). Pipeline maps, now withheld, would be a basic tool for reporters wanting to invest-igate hazards in their own communities.

The safety of the nation’s commercial nuclear power plants had been an issue for decades, even before the Three Mile Island incident of 1979, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had actually earned some credibility in its efforts to keep them safe. But in the weeks before it blacked out its Web site, anti-nuclear groups had pointed out that many plants had flunked mock terror-attack exercises, and some had not even held them.

When federal agencies began pulling from the Web previously published information about environmental hazards that terrorists could exploit, it prompted stories October 3 in The Charleston Gazette and Wall Street Journal, and October 4 in The New York Times.

The top page of the NRC’s Web site displayed the following message:

"Our site is not operational at this time. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken the action to shut down its Web site. In support of our mission to protect public health and safety, we are performing a review of all material on our site. We appreciate your patience and under-standing during these difficult times."

But other agency sites at least initially displayed no messages explaining why the data was inaccessible. Even as late as October 12, someone clicking on EPA’s links to its own RMP*Info page, would get a mysterious "Not Found" error message, even though withdrawal of the information had already been explained in national newspapers.

The events of September 11, and these government reactions to them, threw into stark relief a debate that had been simmering for years. The public, one side argued, has a right to know about hazards it faces, so that people can protect themselves and push government and industry to reduce hazards.

Those who argued for less public access to hazard information had often justified their position by saying the information could be used by terrorists to find the targets that would hurt the most people. If that argument had ever seemed remote or hypothetical, it took on tangible reality September 11.

Federal concern over chemical plant safety took off following the 1984 leak in Bhopal, India, which killed at least 2,000. The chemical right-to-know provisions in the 1986 Superfund law and 1990 Clean Air Act were meant to avoid the need for government to enforce industrial chemical safety by law and regulation.

The theory was that sunlight would correct the problem, making regulation unnecessary. Even today, there is no legal requirement that chemical plants screen employees or lock their gates, much less adopt safer operational procedures.

Reprinted with permission. Published in Environment Writer newsletter October 2001, by the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center.