CHEMICAL SECURITY GONE AWRY

TAKE A LOOK at the photograph on this page. Then imagine having to inventory thousands of these small containers of chemicals in hundreds of laboratories in hundreds of buildings scattered across a vast campus. That's the specter facing institutions of higher learning if a proposed Department of Homeland Security rule on chemical security is not revised. DHS's rule-making process on regulating security at chemical facilities has been a bit like sausage making: messy and with ingredients you really don't want identified. In all fairness, Congress took nearly five years after Sept. 11, 2001, to enact legislation authorizing DHS to issue the chemical security regulation but then gave the department a mere 180 days to do so. Over those many years, industry and academic officials understood the intent of any eventual rule to be securing large chemical industry facilities against catastrophic terrorism. They based this perception on comments from legislators crafting the bill ...