Chemical industry groups are backing a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from earlier this month calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to address a key vulnerability for the sector: the inability of chemical facility owners and operators to efficiently screen visitors and employees for possible terrorism ties.
Once the statutory authority for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program expired in July 2023, chemical facilities lost the ability to work with the DHS to vet personnel and visitors against the federal Terrorist Screening Database. Industry groups and the GAO say this lapse leaves the sector vulnerable to security risks.
The GAO recommends that the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which oversees security for industries including the chemical sector, “identify, evaluate, and implement options for chemical facility owners and operators to voluntarily vet facility personnel and certain others for terrorist ties, and, if necessary, seek legislative authority to do so.”
In written comments provided to the GAO and included in the report, the DHS disagrees with this recommendation, citing “significant legal, privacy, compliance, and resource considerations” related to the processing of personal information required for carrying out such screenings. The DHS writes that it continues to work with chemical facilities to address personnel-related security risks and believes current efforts are sufficient.
But with the lapse of CFATS, many facilities “no longer knew who to contact at CISA to answer their security questions” because they have lost points-of-contact at the agency, the GAO says based on its interviews with three unnamed chemical associations and six unnamed companies for the report.
C&EN asked the DHS and CISA to elaborate on their position and respond to concerns expressed by the chemical sector but did not hear back by publication time.
The DHS established CFATS in 2007. The program assessed security vulnerabilities at high-risk facilities nationwide and provided their operators with the ability to screen personnel and visitors for terrorist ties—something that the private sector is unable to fully do alone. By the time CFATS expired, DHS had evaluated security at over 3,000 facilities considered high risk—amounting to around 7% of chemical facilities nationwide, according to the GAO.
The industry groups American Chemistry Council (ACC) and Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates tell C&EN in written statements that the CFATS program was valuable to chemical manufacturers.
A 2024 survey conducted by the ACC found that three out of four manufacturers viewed the federal watchlist vetting process enabled by CFATS as “important to security,” Scott Jensen, the ACC’s director of issues communication, tells C&EN. In addition, he says, more than half of respondents said that after CFATS expired, their facilities had no adequate vetting alternative.
“Our member companies continue to conduct background checks using private sector screening tools and maintain strong security programs, but many believe those measures are not a complete substitute for access to federal terrorism-related intelligence,” Jensen says.
On a similar note, Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) president and CEO Jenn Klein says SOCMA members are “working with limited resources and without a critical federal screening capability.” The security resources the DHS continues to offer are “valuable” but “do not sufficiently address the gap left by the loss of federal terrorist vetting,” she says.
The nonprofit advocacy network Coming Clean, which supports safety in the chemical industry, tells C&EN that it is unable to comment directly on the GAO report but that it supports making high-risk chemical facilities safer by making chemical processes safer generally. “The safest way to address security concerns is to remove the threat,” says Maya Nye, federal policy director at Coming Clean.
“The recent anniversary of Sept. 11 reminds us that protecting critical infrastructure is an enduring national security responsibility,” Klein says. “Congress should make restoring [the CFATS] program a priority.”
