The Environmental Protection Agency is "rethinking its position" on creating an Internet site showing data about worst-case accident scenarios at chemical plants "as Washington gets more serious about protecting the nation against terrorist attacks," The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
Congress in 1990 required that worst-case scenario data on chemical storage facilities be made public. When the EPA proposed to make the information available via the Internet as part of its electronic "Public Right To Know" program, security experts in April voiced concerns that giving such access would increase the risk of terrorist attacks on the sites.
Since then, the EPA hired two outside security-consulting firms to study the problem who found there have been two threats on US chemical facilities since 1991. The consultants said that posting the information on the Internet would double the risk of attack because terrorists would be able to "scan across the entire country for the 'best' targets." The consultants suggested the "least risky way" would be to place the information in a reading room so readers could be identified.
This week an EPA advisory committee is slated to study "less-risky options" for making the information available (John Fialka, Wall Street Journal, 9/3).
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