Bureau of Reclamation Regional Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise Program
The dams, power plants, and canals constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) since 1902 are critical to the infrastructure of the western United States. For example:
- BOR is the largest wholesaler of water in the country:
- provides water to more than 31 million people
- provides one out of five Western farmers with irrigation water for 10 million acres of farmland that produce 60% of the nation's vegetables and 25% of its fruits and nuts
- BOR is the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the western United States: 58 power plants annually provide more than 40 billion kilowatt hours producing enough electricity to serve 6 million homes
To measure the effectiveness of security at two of its largest dams, BOR called on the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) to develop and implement an exercise program.
The work began with a successful pilot exercise program at Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah in 2004.
In 2005, ORISE facilitated a series of administrative and field activities that culminated in a full-scale tactical exercise at Grand Coulee Dam in Washington. The initiative validated the ability of the Grand Coulee Security Response Force to respond to a full spectrum of security threats. A regional level response exercise program, it involved the the Grand Coulee Dam and 15 other federal, state, tribal, and local agencies.
In planning the exercise, ORISE used meetings, conferences, and preliminary tabletop exercises and vignettes to assess:
- guard force readiness
- coordination of outside law enforcement and medical response assistance
- command and control issues for BOR's regional and headquarters offices.
Lessons learned from these activities were integrated into the final 48-hour, full-scale exercise that tested the Security Response Force on a number of attack indicators.
Participating agencies were also able to evaluate their own procedures for dealing with hostile events at the dam.
