[Senate Hearing 114-506]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-506
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S FUNCTIONS AND
CAPABILITIES TO RESPOND TO ENERGY-RELATED
EMERGENCIES, INCLUDING IMPACTS TO CRITICAL
ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
AUGUST 15, 2016
__________
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho RON WYDEN, Oregon
MIKE LEE, Utah BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
STEVE DAINES, Montana AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
CORY GARDNER, Colorado MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia
Colin Hayes, Staff Director
Patrick J. McCormick III, Chief Counsel
Tristan Abbey, Senior Professional Staff Member
Brianne Miller, Professional Staff Member
Angela Becker-Dippman, Democratic Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel
Rich Glick, Democratic General Counsel
Brie Van Cleve, Democratic Science & Technology Fellow
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Cantwell, Hon. Maria, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
Washington..................................................... 1
WITNESSES
Moniz, Hon. Ernest, Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy......... 5
Ezelle, Robert, Director, Washington State Emergency Management
Division....................................................... 51
Bowman, Stephanie, Commissioner, Port of Seattle (Washington).... 58
Hairston, John, Chief Administrative Officer, Bonneville Power
Administration, U.S. Department of Energy...................... 63
Rogers, Scot, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, F5
Networks, Inc.................................................. 73
Imhoff, Carl, Manager, Grid Research Program, Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy................. 78
Best, Dr. Lynn, Chief Environmental Officer, Seattle City Light.. 87
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Best, Dr. Lynn:
Opening Statement............................................ 87
Written Testimony............................................ 90
BNSF Railway:
Statement for the Record..................................... 110
Bowman, Stephanie:
Opening Statement............................................ 58
Written Testimony............................................ 60
Cantwell, Hon. Maria:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Chart entitled ``Oil trains moving through Washington''...... 47
Ezelle, Robert:
Opening Statement............................................ 51
Written Testimony............................................ 54
Hairston, John:
Opening Statement............................................ 63
Written Testimony............................................ 65
Imhoff, Carl:
Opening Statement............................................ 78
Written Testimony............................................ 82
Moniz, Hon. Ernest:
Opening Statement............................................ 5
Clear Path IV: Energy-Focused Disaster Response Exercise
Summary Report, April 19-20, 2016.......................... 9
Written Testimony............................................ 24
Rogers, Scot:
Opening Statement............................................ 73
Written Testimony............................................ 76
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S FUNCTIONS AND CAPABILITIES TO RESPOND TO
ENERGY-RELATED EMERGENCIES, INCLUDING IMPACTS TO CRITICAL ENERGY
INFRASTRUCTURE
----------
MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Seattle, Washington.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:30 a.m. PDT at
the Campion Ballroom at Seattle University, Seattle,
Washington, Hon. Maria Cantwell, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL, U.S. SENATOR FROM
WASHINGTON
Senator Cantwell [presiding]: Today's meeting will come to
order. I want to thank everyone for being here today. I
especially want to thank Secretary Moniz for traveling to the
Pacific Northwest to be part of this historic field hearing.
I want to thank Seattle University and Father Sundborg, who
I know is not here today, for hosting us again. We were here
last year to discuss issues with Senator Barrasso related to
the fire season and some great work came out of that hearing,
so I expect the same out of this morning's discussion.
First we are going to hear from Secretary Moniz and have a
chance to discuss with him, for the official record, a variety
of issues, mostly related to the Quadrennial Energy Review and
updating our energy infrastructure.
We will then hear from a group of Northwest experts on the
second panel: Dr. Lynn Best, who is with Seattle City Light;
Stephanie Bowman, from the Port of Seattle; Robert Ezelle, with
the Washington Department Emergency Management; John Hairston,
with the Bonneville Power Administration; Carl Imhoff, from
Pacific Northwest National Lab; and Scot Rogers, with F5
Networks. I look forward to hearing everyone's comments and to
the discussion we are going to have today.
I want to welcome the Secretary to the Pacific Northwest
and thank him for coming to visit us. We are very proud of our
history of innovation in the Northwest and the energy mix of
our electricity grid.
We have already had a busy morning. Secretary Moniz and I
just recently visited the Bullet Foundation and discussed some
of the smart building and zero energy building developments
happening in the Northwest. Later, we will go over to the
University of Washington to see more great innovation and then
to the Tri-Cities tomorrow to look at the Hanford site and
Hanford issues.
It is not every day that an Energy Secretary makes two days
available for a particular region of the country, but I think
our region deserves to have that much attention because of the
challenges and the level of innovation that is happening here.
Mr. Secretary, before I begin my formal remarks, I want to
thank you again for making so much time for us and for your
great service to our country.
Secretary Moniz. Thank you for hosting me.
Senator Cantwell. With that, we will start the hearing
which, as I said, is really a hearing to talk about updating
and securing our critical infrastructure and energy resources.
The United States is experiencing a very dramatic
transformation in how we produce and transport energy. Many of
these changes are positive. A more modern grid enables greater
quantities of clean sources of energy. Consumers are able to
more efficiently use energy and choose low cost alternatives to
meet their needs.
We also know that these changes can produce greater stress
on our energy transportation infrastructure. For example, crude
by rail or pipeline challenges.
The energy industry and federal and state and local
governments must work more closely together on these to update
our energy infrastructure to satisfy demands for reliable, safe
and affordable energy.
As I mentioned, many of these issues are discussed in the
Secretary of Energy's Quadrennial Energy Review, issued last
year to communicate the many, many energy-related challenges we
face. Today we are going to talk about three of those specific
challenges, those that really concern us here in the Northwest.
First, we are going to discuss the pressure that increased
domestic production of oil has been placing on our rail system,
everything from pushing commodities off the rails to issues of
public security. The energy transformation the nation is
experiencing is impacting the transportation infrastructure,
and we, in the Northwest, know how much it is impacting us.
Last year the Quadrennial Energy Review concluded that
increased domestic oil production had altered transportation of
liquid fuels and for us, in fact, from 2010 to 2015, rail
shipments to the West have increased by 10,000 percent. That is
almost a mind boggling statistic.
We went from having almost no prior train oil traffic to
having almost 20 trains a week going through every major
population center in our state. Cities like Vancouver, Spokane
and Seattle are very concerned about the safety of these oil
trains and the high profile of incidents that have occurred
across the nation including a recent derailment that happened
in Mosier, Oregon. Twenty-six cities in our state have already
passed resolutions expressing concern or just outright
opposition to oil trains. This is something even the President,
when he was here recently, heard about.
The second issue we want to focus on, as it relates to our
infrastructure, again called out in the Quadrennial Energy
Review, is the need to enhance and prevent cyberattacks. A
successful attack on our grid, as we know in the Northwest,
could have catastrophic outcomes. According to the University
of California, Berkeley, power disruptions already cost our
U.S. economy $96 billion annually.
Today's economy depends upon a well-functioning and robust
electricity grid. As we continue to grow more reliant on the
Internet to manage the grid and energy-consuming products,
cybersecurity will become even more important.
The Quadrennial Energy Review noted that in 2013, 151
different cyber incidents involving the energy sector were
reported to the Department of Homeland Security. I know there
is an ongoing effort by the Secretary, working with our
national labs and Homeland Security and various industry, to
work on preventing cyberattacks in the future.
But I think we are here today to discuss the ideas that we
should be pursuing as our information age architecture
continues to grow, that our investment in cybersecurity should
continue to grow. Today almost everything and everyone relies
on a well-functioning electricity grid. Our hospitals, our
first responders, our water treatment facilities, fueling
stations, transportation communications, everything will be
impacted by a prolonged blackout.
As we will hear from F5 this morning, most of our
investment to date has been focused on protecting the security
of our networks. Much more needs to be done to invest in the
security of our software systems. Software attacks are growing.
State agents, acting on behalf of foreign governments or
terrorist organizations, have attempted almost on a daily basis
to hack into our electricity grid.
We have heard stories that maybe the Russians are behind
the attacks on computers at the Democratic National Committee
and that the North Koreans were involved or perhaps involved in
the Sony system hack two years ago. We need to redouble our
efforts to thwart not only cyber but physical attacks against
the grid as well and to make sure we are continuing to make
investments to upgrade our infrastructure.
I think the Secretary may also have some announcements
about that today as it relates to Northwest companies and
continuing to make that investment. But we do have many, many
Northwest companies that, from big data to Smart Grid, are
trying to help build out the infrastructure that will keep us
ahead of some of these attacks.
Finally, as the climate continues to change, more attention
needs to be paid to the impacts of that and natural disasters,
severe weather, all of these things, also impact our energy
infrastructure. We know in the Pacific Northwest what a one-
degree change in temperature means for snow melt and what a big
impact it has on our hydro system.
Government has an obligation to coordinate with the private
sector to reduce the impacts of natural disasters on our energy
infrastructure. This is especially important for us in the
Northwest where we are susceptible to earthquakes, fires,
droughts, floods and landslides and getting the energy system
up and operating again is critical.
Secretary Moniz is going to, I believe, release a report
today about the Department of Energy's (DOE) recent Clear Path
IV exercise. This exercise examined how well the Pacific
Northwest energy sector might respond to a massive earthquake
associated with a tsunami. The findings suggest that we have
more to do to enhance our energy security but clearly the
Federal Government needs to play a role in helping us get that
plan into action.
We are sitting in the middle of the Cascadia subduction
zone which can produce very strong earthquakes and
corresponding tsunamis, and an event of this magnitude could
wipe out the infrastructure that brings electricity and fuel
for a very long time. The Department of Energy's findings from
its Clear Path IV exercise are particularly illuminating.
First, we need to help the energy sector assess the damage
from natural disasters more quickly and more accurately to
facilitate the restoration of service. The Pacific Northwest
National Lab is developing technology on this that will help
expedite those assessments.
Second, the Federal Government needs to use its resources
to enhance the effect of the state and local industry efforts
to restore the energy infrastructure. We all know what happens
when we have a storm and the amount of time we have tried to
cut down on getting electricity grids back up and operational
by coordinating with utilities all throughout the region.
Imagine this on a much grander scale.
Third, the Department of Defense and other agencies can
provide aviation and maritime resources to transport and
replace equipment such as electric transformers and hard hit
areas not able to be reached by road. Federal agencies can also
help make sure that we have enhanced infrastructure and
coordination for the restoration of those energy sector areas.
I look forward to hearing more about this report from the
Secretary.
We are already working on some of these ideas in Congress.
We just recently passed out of the Senate a comprehensive
energy bill, the first one in nine years, and this bill is now
in conference. It includes important provisions for doubling
our efforts on research for the grid and specifically targeting
cyberattacks. It would fund modernization to make the grid more
flexible in the cases of emergency. It also puts the Energy
Secretary in charge of developing and implementing a response
for energy emergencies. So I am so pleased that he is here
today to discuss that. We also, in the bill, make sure that we
continue to focus on upgrading our energy infrastructure as it
relates to the grid and a workforce that it will take to
accomplish that.
Again, we want to welcome the Energy Secretary here today,
and thank him for coming to the Northwest and looking at all
the innovation that the Northwest has to offer. For example, we
just toured a smart building. The Energy bill would upgrade our
Smart building efforts through the Department of Energy's help
and hopefully reduce the amount of energy used. About 40
percent of all energy is consumed now in buildings.
Mr. Secretary, again, thank you for being in the Pacific
Northwest. Our hearing process is usually five minutes for
opening statements, even for a Secretary, but today we are
waving that rule. We are in the Northwest, and we are going to
make our own rule.
Please use whatever time you would like this morning to
present your testimony and discuss any issues you think are
relevant to today's subjects.
STATEMENT OF HON. ERNEST MONIZ, SECRETARY,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Secretary Moniz. Great.
Well thank you, Senator Cantwell. I really appreciate the
opportunity to address the Department of Energy's
responsibilities for helping the energy sector prepare and
respond to a wide range of threats and hazards at a time, as
you said, of rapidly changing energy systems, dramatically
increased oil and gas production, driving exports, engaging new
geographies requiring infrastructure development. Market
structures are shifting. Natural gas displacing coal. Dramatic
renewables growth. Efficiency, challenging business models.
It's really one of the most dynamic times, I think, we've ever
seen in the energy system. And as you have said, that spills
over into infrastructure challenges that we will discuss today.
But I do want to take the opportunity, given the lack of a
5-minute clock, to also thank you for collaboration and for
your leadership in this and in other issues and particularly
single out your commitment to innovation. I think we are very
well aligned on that. And also your leadership in emphasizing
the regional nature of innovation and our opportunities to
improve regional ecosystems here in the Northwest, but also
across the country. We're going to need that to succeed in our
energy and climate goals. So again, thank you for all of that,
not to mention a great time here in Seattle.
So, as President Obama has pointed out, our energy and
communication systems enable all other infrastructures to
function. And of course, communications in turn, depend upon
electricity. So, if we don't protect the energy sector, we're
putting, essentially, every other sector in the economy in
peril.
When the DOE was established in 1977, the nation's energy
vulnerability was perceived mainly to be the threat of physical
disruption of oil supplies. Though DOE did inherit emergency
authorities from precursor agencies, and I'll come back to
those, the only reference to emergency response in the DOE
Organization Act was direction for DOE to develop ``an
effective strategy for distributing and allocating fuels in
periods of short supply.'' So very, very narrow reference to
the issues of those days.
Now fast forward to this century, and we face a very
different set of threats to our energy systems. In response
there are now laws, actions and Presidential directives that
are focused on threats such as severe weather, natural
disasters, EMP, aging infrastructure, cyber and physical
threats. So it's a considerably broadened threat spectrum that
we need to consider.
We need to make energy infrastructure investments
commensurate to the critical role of that infrastructure and to
today's threat environment. In particular, the reliance of all
of our critical energy infrastructures on electricity places a
very high premium on reliable, modern and hardened electric
grid resistant to the continually evolving cyber threats.
And, I'll come back to this later, that is why in the
second installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review, that you
referred to earlier, we are focusing on the electricity system,
end-to-end, including the entire threat surface. So that is
something that, I think, we get, we share an appreciation of
that priority.
Now DOE does have some long standing emergency authorities.
During emergencies the Department has independent authority to
order temporary electricity connections, to make exchanges of
crude oil or petroleum products from our reserves, to assist
entities in procuring necessary energy materials to maintain
supply during an emergency and to control nuclear materials.
We also have authorities that require a Presidential
finding including orders to protect or restore the reliability
of critical infrastructure, sales from the petroleum reserve,
allocation of energy materials in the civilian market and
allocation of natural gas and fuel switching in power plants.
So those can all follow a Presidential determination.
Finally, DOE has a consultative role for Jones Act waivers
and a concurrence role for fuel waivers during emergencies. Now
these authorities have been used many times. The Department has
used its independent authority to connect temporary electricity
lines, for example, to restore power after hurricanes like Ike,
Katrina and Rita. After Super Storm Sandy, the Department
loaned 120,000 barrels from the Northwest Home Heating Oil
Reserve, NHHOR, to the Department of Defense for use in
emergency responder vehicles, essentially low sulfur diesel
fuel.
DOE also has had legislation and directives related to new
emergency response authorities. The California electricity
crisis of 2000-2001 actually led to the use of multiple
authorities deriving from the Federal Power Act, the Defense
Production Act and the Natural Gas Policy Act.
Now with regard to new authorities and responsibilities,
the FAST Act that you referred to, the Transportation bill,
provides DOE with a new authority to protect critical
infrastructure against cyber, EMP, geomagnetic disturbance and
physical attack threats. These authorities do not apply,
however, to natural disasters other than geomagnetic storms. So
while these authorities are welcome, they do create an
asymmetric situation for authorities for natural disasters and
malevolent attacks even though the outcomes could be similar.
The 2015 Balanced Budget Act directs DOE to establish a
strategic petroleum reserve modernization program to protect
the U.S. economy from the impacts of emergency products supply
disruptions, and I will return to this later.
Finally, in terms of new responsibilities and authorities,
President Obama has addressed these issues through Presidential
Policy Directive 21 which identifies DOE as the sector-specific
agency for energy infrastructure, making it the federal lead
for the prioritization and coordination of activities to
strengthen the security and resilience of critical energy
infrastructure.
The DOE also serves within the Administration as the lead
agency for Emergency Support Function 12 which facilitates
recovery from disruptions to energy infrastructure. During a
response operation the Department works with industry and
federal, state and local partners to assess disaster impacts on
energy infrastructure, coordinate response to expedite
restoration and to monitor and provide situational awareness of
impacts to key decision-makers. The Department deploys
responders who work directly with affected utilities and local
officials on the ground during a disaster. Our response force
is entirely voluntary and we are training right now nearly 100
members of our staff to be prepared to deploy for all hazard
contingencies.
Over the past two years our Deputy Secretary and I have led
a deliberate effort to strengthen our emergency response
capabilities and our critical partnerships with the energy
sector. With 90 percent of the nation's power infrastructure
privately owned and operated, coordinating and aligning efforts
between the government and the private sector is necessary to
be effective in emergency response.
Our challenge here is speed. If we have a government
process that takes too long to share information about dynamic
threats, then we're going to fail to protect our
infrastructure. Our solution is to provide tools, information
and practice so that companies are aware of risks as soon as
they're identified. We can bring together information across
the Department and across the government and then take action
together. We also partnered with state, local and tribal
governments with an updated Energy Emergency Assurance
Coordinators MOU that I signed early this year. DOE will
enhance robust training and exercising, bringing stakeholders
together to plan for shared regional hazards, and I will come
back to an example of that.
One of DOE's core missions, and you've said it already
several times which I appreciate, is to support innovation and
that includes innovation to help our nation's energy security.
So we are growing our partnerships with academia and the
private sector and, of course, leveraging our 17 national
laboratories in order to make our infrastructure more secure
and resilient.
At this time I will say that in this state we have one of
our premier national laboratories, specific Northwest, East of
the Cascades. You all should take a trip over the mountains and
we will tomorrow, in fact, do that to visit that laboratory. Of
course, it will require substantial additional investment over
many years to expand transformational innovation that can
outpace the dynamic threats that we face. And here I will say
that across the board the President's Fiscal Year 2017 budget
proposes the first increment of energy R and D funding to meet
Mission Innovation goals, specifically a doubling of our energy
related R and D over a five-year period. It also proposes
regional innovation partnerships and again, Senator Cantwell
has been a leader in advocating for this approach, no doubt
helped by the fact that she anticipates this area would have a
very robust regional response given all of the intellectual and
other assets in this part of the country.
This budget will provide a very strong foundation for
addressing the infrastructure needs discussed here as well,
again, as the broader clean energy investments needed for our
economic, environmental and security goals.
Today we are announcing $30 million of funding. That may
actually have some additional funding added to it next year,
but for today $30 million of funding for cybersecurity,
including research and development and programs to develop
energy professional education in cybersecurity. Two of the
awards are in Washington State. They are the Schweitzer
Engineering company in Pullman, Washington with a total of
about $7.5 million for the company in developing its
cybersecurity software products. That's a terrific development
across the board but certainly as well here in Washington
State.
Now, robust exercises are also crucial to ensure industry
and government are better prepared to work as a team during
real world emergencies.
In April 2016 DOE led Clear Path IV, an interagency
exercise focused on testing and evaluating energy sector
response plans in a scenario depicting a Cascadia Subduction
Zone 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, the so-called really big one,
made famous in the New Yorker article.
[The information referred to follows:]
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One outcome of that was the importance of accelerating
damage assessments immediately. And as you said, PNNL, Pacific
Northwest Laboratory, is right now developing imagery tools to
do just that, to bring new technology to bear on making fast
assessments of damage so that responders can prioritize where
they have to go in order to get not only energy up but to
provide all the other services to our displaced people.
Clear Path served to elevate energy sector participation in
the subsequent Cascadia Rising exercise which was government-
wide in June. That really helped the entire Emergency
Management Team to identify resource requirements for natural
disaster.
Today, as you said, we are announcing this is a summary,
the Clear Path After Action report. I want to say that this
Clear Path was very important. It was the first use of our, I
mentioned earlier the Deputy Secretary and I have been
reorganizing some of the response functions, that included
putting together a unified command structure for emergency
response. This was the first use of that command structure.
To give you an idea of our complexity, it deals with
operations, planning and logistics. But with the Office of
Electricity, the emergency response activity in the Office of
Electricity, our national Nuclear Security Administration, our
Associate Under Secretary for Management Performance who deals
with physical security, our CIO cyber activity, our
intelligence activity and our management and administration
activities which includes procurement. All of those offices
which are spread out in the Department, have now, we're trying
to, we are organizing under this unified command structure that
was exercised for the first time in Clear Path IV.
I might add that in addition, of course, to their
participation, for the first time in the Clear Path series, we
held it out in the field. This was headquartered out of
Portland, in Bonneville, in the field but it was regional. And
of course, that allowed us, really, to much more effectively
bring in state and local responders into our exercise out here
in the field. We also had the energy industry the first time,
not only electricity, but the oil and gas sector. We had Canada
involved and of course, multiple federal agencies.
So this was a what you need to do so that we're not trying
to do it for the first time in an emergency, very effective, as
I said. It highlighted the importance of immediate assessment.
But it also brought to the fore other things, for example,
dealing with industry. The need for waivers. There can be anti-
trust issues, particularly in the oil and gas sector. We have
to be prepared in advance so that we can do those with speed.
So that was really very important, and I believe we need to do
much more of this in the future.
Now I'll add that unique to DOE we actually own critical
assets in the sector that we are supporting and particularly
relevant in, again, this part of the country our preparedness
and response activities for our power market administrations
like Bonneville directly overlap with what we are trying to do,
of course, with the broader energy sector.
So, another important direction, we believe, that we are
emphasizing over the last couple of years is to develop what we
call enterprise-wide approaches. That unified command structure
is an example of an enterprise-wide approach but the idea here,
in general, is to bring all of our resources into play,
including those at our national laboratories.
Two examples, two additional examples, of that is we have
formed an integrated Joint Cyber Coordination Center. It's a
collaborative, intelligence-driven approach to cybersecurity to
protect the entirety of the DOE attack surface including DMAs
and we are working toward a consolidated emergency operations
center to allow our unified command structure to operate out of
a single facility.
Finally, let me turn to the issue of managing our strategic
energy resources, reserves. We already mentioned that the 2015
Balanced Budget Act, drawing upon a recommendation of the
Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), supports modernizing the
petroleum reserve. The petroleum reserve physical assets date
back many decades, need modernization and frankly, we should
also, in my view, revisit some of the operating procedures of
the petroleum reserve.
But the Balanced Budget Act, again, following up our QER
recommendation, has two phases. Life Extension Phase II will
address unanticipated SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) related
equipment failures that have been impacting the reserves
operational readiness capability. Second, marine terminal
distribution capability enhancements will add dedicated marine
terminals in each of the SPR's three distribution systems to
address the impacts of changes in the U.S. midstream oil
movement that have significantly reduced the effective
distribution capacity of the SPR in an emergency.
And just last Friday, again, these hearings have a way of
focusing the mind. Just last Friday, the Department approved
what's called CD-0, the first stage of project management
protocols which establishes the mission need for the marine
terminal distribution capability. CD-0 was already passed for
the modernization, the life extension phase, and we will soon
submit a report to Congress on DOE's long term strategic review
of the SPR.
So in conclusion, let me say that upon my return to DOE
after a 13-year absence, I was struck by the imperatives of a
new and complex mission for the Department. Almost nothing that
I described in this testimony was present when I left the
Department in January 2001. But ensuring resilience,
reliability, security and emergency response with significant
operational responsibilities is really a new and very important
direction for the Department. And again, thank you for your
support.
The first installment of the QER, again, addressed these
issues of infrastructure, resilience, reliability, safety and
asset security. And again, many of those recommendations are in
progress. Some of them require new statutory authority. We've
received some statutory authority, and these will improve
energy infrastructure resilience.
The second installment, as I mentioned, is on the
electricity system, end-to-end, and these are all critical for
emergency response and for meeting our climate goals. However,
the fragmentation of our current emergency responsibilities and
assets within the Department, partly reflected in that unified
command structure, does present a management challenge. And so,
I want to say that we continue to analyze organizational
options in light of these complex, cross-cutting and evolving
requirements.
The combination of increasing responsibilities and
fragmented management arrangements creates some risk to the
Department is not adequately resourced to effectively carry out
its responsibilities, and that's an area where we look forward
to working with this Committee and with Congress as a whole to
provide an appropriately resourced energy emergency response
capability as an essential component of a robust energy
infrastructure supporting a 21st century economy.
Thank you for your graciousness in affording me the time to
provide somewhat longer testimony. But it really is a broad
scope of activities, and again, we look forward to solidifying
this going forward with your help and the Committee's.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Moniz follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for
that testimony, and thank you for your work on the Quadrennial
Energy Review--the plan for our energy infrastructure and where
we are as a nation. That, I think, is a very good blueprint to
start our discussions as a nation of where we need to go.
I would like to unpack that a little bit with your
testimony. To me, reading the report, which is voluminous and
is available for people online, I think they can get access to
it or at least the key recommendations. It seems to me that as
you tried to allude in your testimony, coming back to DOE after
some absence----
Secretary Moniz. Thirteen years.
Senator Cantwell. Thirteen years, that we have several
phenomenons going on. One is just this issue of we wanted to
get off of foreign oil. We said we wanted to produce our own,
and basically we had an infrastructure through the Gulf for
importing oil and delivering it.
Now we are in a different situation and that, in and of
itself, is causing competition on the rails, competition even
between energy products. There are instances where oil is
pushing off coal and coal and oil are pushing off agriculture
products and a great deal of complexity. How would you
characterize that shift in demand on our infrastructure?
Significant? I mean, how would you characterize for the
American people how big a challenge that change has meant to
our infrastructure and some of these security issues?
Secretary Moniz. Yes, and by the way, I'd like to, once
again, thank you and congratulate you for reading the
Quadrennial Energy Review on the floor of the Senate which was
much appreciated.
The increased production of oil and natural gas in the
United States has obviously been a major story in terms of our
economy and also environment in the sense that the natural gas
boom, in particular, has led to a displacement of higher carbon
coal with lower carbon natural gas producing less CO2
emissions.
However, I mean, the big story with regard to
infrastructure is not simply the scale, it's the fact that it's
happening in different parts of the country. And so, it has
changed flows completely.
I mentioned one example here already in terms of the
petroleum reserve modernization. We have oil flowing in
opposite directions in many of our distribution systems which
is why we need to have a distribution system made for the
current realities. Another is that it used to be that oil and
products flowed from the Gulf elsewhere. Now we have
considerable flows to the Gulf. Third, we have, still with oil,
we have an addition, as you know very, very well, flows going
east and west without established pipeline infrastructures and
therefore, bringing in trains substantially.
Now it is true that oil by train has gone down very
substantially nationally in this last year but not necessarily
regionally, particularly here. But the magnitude of these
changes, you mentioned up to 20 trains here in the Northwest.
Just recently I was visiting one of the largest, the largest
refinery complex on the East Coast in Philadelphia. And the
changes are--clearly stress the system.
On the one hand, that one refinery was receiving four unit
trains per day of Bakken oil. And now suddenly, it's dropped to
one as they have resumed importing from Africa light oil. So,
it's really hard to keep up with these major changes and of
course, as you have different infrastructure we need to build
out in different ways.
I didn't mention natural gas but a similar thing there is
that, again, all gas until a decade ago, fundamentally, flowed,
you know, mostly out of the Gulf and some in the West in the
Rockies, in New Mexico, in Colorado, et cetera. And now you
have incredible production out of Pennsylvania, part of West
Virginia and Ohio. The infrastructure, frankly, has not yet
completely caught up to that. So these are big strains on the
system, and we are feeling it.
Senator Cantwell. I am glad that you characterize them as
big strains because we definitely feel that way in the
Northwest and this, in and of itself, I think, is a big shift.
I also think that cyber is a big shift and change too, but we
will get to that in a second.
But on this issue, one of DOE's responsibilities is,
obviously, helping us understand the properties and
characteristics of some of these products.
One of the things that you are working on is this issue of
oil volatility. I am particularly concerned about the level of
volatility in Bakken crude, because oil shipped from the Gulf
basically doesn't have the same level of volatility when it is
shipped. But with the advent of Bakken crude in the upper
Midwest, we are seeing the volatility of the Reid Vapor
Pressure, the pound per inch of pressure, well over 13 percent
in some instances.
Can you elaborate on what DOE is doing to measure that
volatility and what we should be looking for to make sure that
we have a vapor pressure that is not going to impact the level
of explosions and derailments and things of that nature that we
have seen in some other areas of our country?
Secretary Moniz. Well I certainly wish I could give you the
final results of the study today but that still is, probably,
about a year away.
Now, just again, to make, I mean, you know this, just to
make it clear to everyone else that the, of course, the
Department of Energy does not have the regulatory authorities
but right at the beginning, and I think with a lot of
encouragement as well from Congress, appropriately, we were
asked to partner with the Department of Transportation, and we
have, to explore the science involved in the transport of oil
and frankly, it would apply as well to other flammable liquids
because there are a lot of others that are transported as well
and to try to understand the implications of that science for
further steps that the Department of Transportation, for
example, might take.
So the study is being carried out, is being led by Sandia
National Laboratory. It is looking at the characteristics of
the oil, volatility, as you say. And basically, I think, it's a
question of looking at this particular crude oil which has
quite of bit of dissolved gasses in it. So looking at that, at
the qualities is very important.
However, it's also important to understand how and when,
for example, the oil is sampled because as you go through
different processes the characteristics can change so that's
also part of what's being looked at. And this may be able to,
hopefully, lead to some insights into how the sampling
protocols are managed which then can impact whether further
processing is required or not. North Dakota as a state has
taken some steps in terms of processing certain of the tight
oils. And so, I think----
Senator Cantwell. Well I don't think anybody in the
Northwest----
Secretary Moniz. Yeah.
Senator Cantwell. Wants to leave it up to the State of
North Dakota.
Secretary Moniz. No, no.
Senator Cantwell. To figure out what the standard is, so--
--
Secretary Moniz. No, so our job is to, right now, try to do
a thorough job on the science and engineering aspects. That
will include going to combustion tests in this next phase at
Sandia which has, by the way, a long history of doing
combustion field tests and studies.
And then I'd love to be able to accelerate it, but science
takes time and it's probably going to be a year until we have
the final results. Then those have to be translated at state
and federal levels into further action.
Senator Cantwell. I noticed that a Sandia National Lab
report found that ``currently used methods for assigning crude
oil classifications are often inaccurate'' and that there is
not scientific agreement on the volatility of crude oils, like
Bakken crude.
How do you think we might be able to build scientific
consensus, that we might be able to get more discussion going
about this issue because clearly I view this as a resistance by
those who think they can just ship Bakken crude on the cheap. I
note that Wall Street will not finance a deal with Bakken crude
at this level. They require that it has to be nine percent
vapor pressure. As I said, other incidents of this kind of
shipment never exceeded 13 percent. Now we are sitting here
arguing over whether volatility matters or not. What can we do
to get the rest of the scientific community, while we are doing
this review, to help in the discussion so that we don't end up
with your report and then we are still doing this leg work
after that 12-month period of time?
Secretary Moniz. Well first of all, I think the report
you're referring to was the Phase One report from Sandia which
was basically a literature review. It was not original work but
bringing together literature. And again, I believe the focus
there was on the fact of the large amount of dissolved, non-
condensable gasses. So that was the characteristic, I think,
they were seeing. And that's exactly what is driving now them
in their actual scientific work in terms of the
characterization.
I just really can't give a clear answer in terms of what
one might do in terms of the, you know, I mean, prior to having
the results for you. I understand there's a tension between
getting the science done right and doing it as fast as one can,
but doing it right. Obviously the desire to take action clearly
was not that long ago when the derailment in the Columbia Gorge
happened just in June, I think it was.
And so, again, nationally there's been a decrease in oil
shipments by rail. That has not been the case in the Northwest.
And it's also the case that, I think to be fair, I think
the railroads, some of the railroads for sure, have made some
pretty substantial investments really over the last year.
Issues you referred to earlier, in fact, about commodity
competition in the railroads, I mean, that was a very stressful
period in 2014/2015 when the, I think, frankly the whole system
was, again, taken by surprise at the rapid increase in the
demand for trains for transporting oil.
I think that's been somewhat sorted out in terms of the
commodity issue. But your issue in terms of any intermediate
regulation, I mean, the Department of Transportation clearly
has taken some steps in terms of rail cars, speed, speeds in
different places and the like. And yet, we still seem to have
some of these derailments, presumably caused by track issues.
Senator Cantwell. We are only going to ask you to swim in
your lane today.
Secretary Moniz. Yeah.
Senator Cantwell. As it relates to----
Secretary Moniz. Right.
Senator Cantwell. Helping us on the energy verification.
But I will say that this issue, as it relates to commodities, I
don't think is over, and I do think that your work on the
Quadrennial Energy Review shows that our infrastructure cannot
meet this level of demand in shipment without pushing product
off.
Again, this is probably not something that DOE can solve as
it relates to----
Secretary Moniz. Right.
Senator Cantwell. These issues immediately. But this issue
of----
Secretary Moniz. Right.
Senator Cantwell. Assessing our infrastructure, assessing
our needs and, as you say, can shift at any moment as well.
Secretary Moniz. Yeah, it's----
Senator Cantwell. As it relates to source.
But I go back to what you commented on that this is a
pretty big shift for the United States of America. We wanted
energy independence. Well, we've got it. But now we have our
own safety and security issues right here in the Northwest with
a 10,000 percent increase in the amount of oil train traffic
coming through here.
When we have a city council in Spokane who is saying we are
going to fine a train for coming through period, that is their
ballot measure. We have a chart here.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1997.032
Secretary Moniz. Yeah, I was going to say it's----
Senator Cantwell. Just to take a second.
So Bakken Oil comes from the upper Midwest, but it goes
through every major metropolitan area. It goes through Spokane,
down through the Gorge which is a very challenging, scenic area
into the Columbia River. So the rescue operations are very
challenged. Through Clark County, Vancouver and then up through
here and all the way up to refineries. We have four refineries
in the north part of our state. It is hitting every major city
on those 20 trains per week.
I am sure North Dakota producers probably think that they
are going through a very remote, rural area of their state,
across also very remote, rural parts of the North United
States, but that is not what happens when they get to
Washington because of the Cascades.
Secretary Moniz. Yeah.
Senator Cantwell. They have to go through every major----
Secretary Moniz. Yeah.
Senator Cantwell. As somebody said on one of my recent
trips to Spokane, just about everybody in Spokane lives two
blocks from the railroad tracks. I mean, that is their view of
how close the oil shipments are.
This issue for us has become very front and center with
every mayor, city council and community in our state as it
relates to this safety and security issue. So we will leave
this.
Secretary Moniz. Yes.
Senator Cantwell. To the next panel.
Secretary Moniz. Yeah.
Senator Cantwell. And discuss it more with you later.
Secretary Moniz. If I may just add?
Senator Cantwell. Yes.
Secretary Moniz. Just that first of all, I think, it's very
clear and the President has certainly been very clear in saying
that we need to invest in our infrastructure. I mean, and we
need to invest in infrastructure that is reliable, safe and
resilient for the 21st century and not for the 20th century.
Secondly, in terms of the movement of commodities and,
again, you know this very well from the Quadrennial Energy
Review, it is also issues like inland waterways where
tremendous investments are needed to move commodities around.
Senator Cantwell. Well and I hope we can, with your work,
we are separately pushing the Department of Transportation to
make an interim finding about the volatility. We think they
should be doing something about it now but we are also going to
double our efforts working with you to make sure that we are
getting as much scientific information as possible. As you
said, the big shift means that we need to invest in
infrastructure. But the big shift also means we need to stop
and say, is this safe enough for transport?
The 10,000 percent increase is voluminous throughout the
West Coast. You could have this hearing in Oregon or California
and you would have the same discussions. You would have the
same city councils, the same people proposing resolutions on
this.
So I think we need to make sure that we are making it safe
as well, and we will continue to work with your other cabinet
partners to make sure that we are getting that message across.
Before we invite the next panel up though, I do want to
talk to you about the cyber issue, this whole issue of a
unified command.
I don't know how you would characterize this as a shift in
our nation, but again, I would consider it a pretty big shift
because now here we are, a big energy source. Electrification
was always important, but now it is networks and handheld
devices and smart appliances and all sorts of things, all
connected to a grid that could, all of a sudden, be a target of
a major attack.
So when you talk about your unified command structure and
the challenges of that, who are the partners? Where would the
single entity be? How do you process information on a daily
basis?
Secretary Moniz. Well, the unified command structure is
broader than cyber that was for the entire, our entire
emergency response assets. And it's not a physical location,
other than when there is an emergency in the emergency
operations center control room that, again, we are trying to--
which historically in the Department of Energy has always been
run by the Nuclear Security people because of our long standing
need to respond to nuclear incidents. But we think that we need
to really integrate response across our threat spectrum. That
would include nuclear but it includes energy infrastructure,
cybersecurity and the like.
Now within cybersecurity we now have this integrated Joint
Cybersecurity Coordination Center. I may have missed a C, iJC3.
And that has been--the point person, I'm putting them together,
has been the CIO but working with all the cyber-relevant
actors, and I want to emphasize that does include the
intelligence activity.
But very importantly, this involves bringing in the
laboratory experts, the PMA experts. So the ideas that we are
saying that the cybersecurity is really an enterprise-wide
problem, and we need to have them all.
It's a virtual team. It's not a physical center but it's a
virtual team bringing together all the best assets to address a
cyber challenge. And I think you alluded to it, the last data I
saw in 2013, but over half of the cyber incidents reported were
on energy infrastructure. So, it's a tremendous problem that we
have.
Senator Cantwell. Okay.
Secretary Moniz. What we are doing is we are trying to
bring together, again, all of our assets.
Senator Cantwell. Okay.
Secretary Moniz. It would be helpful to have this more
unified operations center, yeah.
Senator Cantwell. Because you are talking about both DOD, I
am assuming, and our other federal agencies involved in
security efforts working in coordination.
Secretary Moniz. And DHS, we do a lot with DHS, in
particular. Yeah, DHS has got a major role here. So we work
with them.
Senator Cantwell. Again, where would you characterize this
as a shift in energy policy, this electrification of our
economy and the challenge of cyber?
Secretary Moniz. If we kind of change subjects, but
relevant to this. If we think about our pathway toward deep de-
carbonization, let's say on a midcentury time scale, there are
two elements that, to me, are, kind of, part of any possible
solution.
One is real progress on the demand side, energy efficiency.
We're not going to get there without real demand side progress.
But we're also not going to get there without, essentially, a
very deep de-carbonization of the electricity sector and
therefore, an expansion of the electricity sector's role in
other parts of the economy, like transportation, for example,
because then it will be drawing upon an essentially carbon-free
system.
So, electricity is only going to become more and more
central to all of these issues. And that, of course, brings us
to the whole threat spectrum, including cyber which we know is
a very, very significant issue. And frankly, as that system
itself becomes more and more, I would say, technologically
complex it's going to have increasing distances, for example,
to bring, you know, renewables over large distances. It's going
to have distributed generation; it's going to have storage;
and, it's going to have a whole new layer of detectors,
sensors, control systems, maybe distributed decision-making to
be able to balance this entire system.
That's all great. It offers new services. It can support
the Internet of things with everything hooked up, but obviously
it also opens up vulnerability, especially in the cyberspace.
So I think that's what we're going to have to face and
frankly, stay ahead of the attack spectrum. So it's a huge
priority for us and I think for the country.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you.
Secretary Moniz. Yeah.
Senator Cantwell. Well thank you, Secretary Moniz. I think
what I am going to ask you to do is come up and join me, if you
will, up here and we will proceed to the second panel of
witnesses. That will also give Secretary Moniz a chance to have
a little opportunity on the other side of the dais here.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. And ask some questions of our witnesses
on these subjects and maybe even get into more of a discussion
on some of the challenges that we face.
Secretary Moniz. Sure.
Senator Cantwell. I see General Lowenberg out in the
audience. Thank you for being here.
There are many others who are here today in the audience
who are responsible for these kinds of shifts and changes and
are doing good work in the Northwest. So thank you all for
coming and talking about how we, as a region, are developing
some of the solution services and networks that are needed.
I introduced the panel before, but I think we are going to
start with Mr. Robert Ezelle, who is the Washington Military
Department's Director of the Emergency Management Division. We
will then go to Ms. Stephanie Bowman, who is with the Port of
Seattle; Mr. John Hairston, who is with the Bonneville Power
Administration; Mr. Scot Rogers from F5; Mr. Carl Imhoff from
the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and Dr. Lynn Best,
who is with Seattle City Light.
With that, Mr. Ezelle, please lead us off.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT EZELLE, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON STATE
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT DIVISION
Mr. Ezelle. Afternoon, Madam Chair and Secretary Moniz.
For the record, my name is Robert Ezelle, and I'm the
Washington Military Department's Director of the Emergency
Management Division. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to
speak with you today about two significant events that could
impact our energy infrastructure.
First are the impacts that could occur to Washington State
and the Pacific Northwest following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake
on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Second, as we've already been
hearing, are some potential consequences to the energy sector
from a cyber event.
A rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) will cause
catastrophic damages all along the West Coast from British
Columbia to Northern California. Damage from a CSZ rupture will
greatly exceed damage from any natural disaster our nation has
seen to date.
Estimates are that our transportation infrastructure,
communication systems, energy distribution, water, sewage and
our health care system will be severely compromised or
inoperative. Bridges will collapse, roadways will be rendered
impassable, the coast will be cut off from the I-5 corridor and
Western Washington will be cut off from Eastern Washington.
We anticipate electric power failing across the region from
significant impacts to both transmission and distribution
systems. Restoration will be time consuming with urban areas
being without power for weeks to months and outlying areas
potentially requiring a couple of years before power is
restored.
Pipelines delivering fuel, oil and national natural gas
will be compromised and possibly destroyed. This means we'll be
left with only the fuel on hand in vehicles or storage tanks
that have not ruptured. This has immediate implications to the
response to a Cascadia event as fuel will be required for
generators, response vehicles and a host of other needs.
However, the most significant effect or impact of a CSZ
rupture will be to the people themselves. Depending on the time
of year we could see upwards of 10,000 fatalities from the
resulting tsunami and from collapsed buildings and landslides.
We estimate we will need to provide food and water to upwards
of a million people immediately following the earthquake. That
number will increase with each passing day as individual and
family preparedness supplies are exhausted.
We conducted a major exercise, Cascadia Rising 2016, from
June 7th to June 10th of this year. We gained valuable lessons
learned that will engage our preparation activities for years
to come. But perhaps the most important thing we drew from the
exercise was perspective.
Our overarching priority immediately following a CSZ event
will be to provide for the life safety and life sustaining
needs of our populous. Each day that passes increases the
vulnerability and the need of our residents. This puts a
critical imperative on restoring our basic infrastructure
starting with transportation, communications and electric power
but it also greatly emphasizes the need for individual and
family preparedness.
Electric power is the enabling component of our 21st
century lives. It also has key interdependencies with other
critical infrastructure industries such as water and waste
water services, natural gas supply and delivery and
telecommunications technologies of all types. Without electric
power our infrastructure cannot operate.
The same goes for fuel distribution. A CSZ event will
damage the major pipeline for delivery of jet fuel as well as
natural gas pipelines and will, of course, disrupt
transportation networks making fuel delivery by truck to
existing depots all but impossible. And without fuel, our
response efforts will grind to a halt.
As I've emphasized, power and fuel are key to a successful
response and recovery. Therefore, their provision and
restoration has to be a top priority for us all.
CR'16 emphasizes the need for detailed response or
continuity of operations planning. This includes all levels of
government from local through state to federal, non-
governmental organizations and private industry so that
essential services can continue to be provided in the event of
a disaster.
Additionally, our lifeline sectors whether publicly or
privately owned must work toward building resiliency. A
resilient infrastructure can either withstand a major disaster
or can be quickly restored in days or weeks rather than months
or years.
We've been talking about the catastrophic and the need to
develop strong plans to build resiliency into our critical
infrastructure. I'd like to touch on a couple of hazards, and
we've already spoken about them today, that are not perhaps at
the scale of a catastrophic event, but could have severe local
or widespread consequences.
The first of these is the transport of the crude oil by
rail. We've seen graphically what can go wrong if there's an
incident involving an oil train. This highlights the need for
detailed planning, again, at all levels of government so that
communities and states are prepared to respond when an incident
occurs, such as the one near the Town of Mosier back in June.
The need for the same level of planning also is required
for cyber threats. In Washington State we've been hard at work
there as well conducting cyber planning across the community of
stakeholders. Organic within the Washington National Guard
structure is a cyber protection unit whose capabilities can
assess or assist with assessment and recommendations concerning
industrial control systems. They have the expertise,
relationship, security clearances and the credibility to
partner and collaborate with the ICS community toward cyber
preparedness.
Most recently in Washington State in a proof of concept
demonstration, our National Guard worked successfully with the
Snohomish County Utilities District to assess their systems and
provide them key suggestions on how they can harden their
infrastructure against cyber penetration and exploitation.
Madam Chair, I'd like to close by just thanking you for
your tremendous support for our National Guard, particularly
the attempts to stand up at a schoolhouse to address some of
the cyber vulnerabilities and then, of course, your long-term
support of the National Guard.
This concludes my testimony, and may I answer any
questions?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ezelle follows:]
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Senator Cantwell. Thank you, thank you.
Ms. Bowman.
STATEMENT OF STEPHANIE BOWMAN, COMMISSIONER,
PORT OF SEATTLE (WASHINGTON)
Ms. Bowman. Good afternoon, Senator Cantwell and Secretary
Moniz. My name is Stephanie Bowman, a Commissioner with the
Port of Seattle. Thank you for the privilege of being here this
afternoon.
The Port of Seattle owns and operates facilities that play
a critical role in facilitating the nation's trade. Our marine
cargo facilities under the management of the Northwest Seaport
Alliance are the fourth largest container load center in the
country. Our port literally supplies goods to businesses and
homes throughout the nation.
On the aviation side, Seattle/Tacoma International Airport
(SeaTac) served 42 million passengers in 2015 and is the
fastest growing, large hub airport in the country.
Additionally, SeaTac is a primary air cargo gateway for the
Pacific Northwest facilitating the export of high value, time
sensitive goods to Asia.
The Port of Seattle facilitates--facilities serve as a
lifeline to the residents of Alaska and Hawaii and any
disruption in port operations due to a natural disaster would
have serious consequences for those states.
Alaska is especially dependent on our infrastructure with
more than 80 percent of all water-borne containerized traffic
that goes to Alaska moves across the terminals at the Port of
Seattle.
Given the critical role that the Port of Seattle plays in
the regional and national economy ensuring that our facilities
are resilient in the case of a disaster is a charge that my
colleagues and I on the Port Commission take very seriously. A
strong federal partnership is critical, and I'm grateful for
the attention that you're giving to this issue today.
Port infrastructure will be essential to the regional
response in the event of a large scale emergency. SeaTac
airport is anticipated to be a hub for relief efforts and our
maritime facilities will also support the response and recovery
missions assuming that they are still operable.
Disruption of flight operations at SeaTac will send a
ripple effect throughout the country's air transportation
system given that our airport's role as a hub for both national
and international flights, particularly our connection to Asia.
Most importantly, it could cripple our collective ability to
respond to disaster.
I wanted to speak briefly about the Port of Seattle's
emergency response planning. The Port of Seattle and our
partners at the Port of Tacoma use nationally recognized best
practices and utilize an all hazards approach to plan for and
respond to any number of different emergency scenarios.
Consistent application of these practices is reinforced through
our robust and systemic training and exercise program that
validates our ability to meet our responsibilities to the
region.
In the case of earthquakes our contingency planning is
based on the risk associated with strong to major earthquakes.
Our seaport facilities, as you know, Senator Cantwell, are at
greater risk than the airport because they were built on
liquefaction zones and are more susceptible to a tsunami.
Given the strain that will be placed on the first
responders in a disaster, we expect that we will need to be
self-sufficient with our emergency response at the airport or
seaport for at least 14 days.
The airport, on the other hand, will be more likely capable
of handling moderate to full disaster relief within 24 to 72
hours, the level of operations at the airport with a focus of
federal and military entities in the recent Cascadia Rising
exercise that Mr. Ezelle just mentioned.
Understandably, the magnitude of any quake will impact our
ability to resume operations. A primary factor in successfully
responding to an event is the effective coordination between
the dozens of entities involved. That is why exercises such as
Cascadia Rising are vital to enhancing the regional resilience.
We are not going to be able to operate resilient airports and
seaports without a strong partnership with the Federal
Government.
In addition to the critical role it will play in responding
to a disaster, we are also dependent on the Federal Government
to help fund our preparedness efforts and I wanted to speak to
that very briefly. We ask that funding levels for these
programs be maintained and that funding be awarded directly to
local jurisdictions including ports. While there are few
federal grant programs that focus on preparedness, the Port
Security Grant Program is currently the main source of federal
funding for all ports for an all hazards investments.
However, many tyeps of projects necessary to support a
comprehensive preparedness effort are ineligible under the Port
Security Grant Program. Given this, the Federal Government, we
hope, will--should consider creating critical infrastructure
resiliency grant program and a national strategy to help
funding decisions with prioritizing the nation's gateway ports
which are at greater risk.
Finally, I wanted to close, shift gears for just a few
moments and close with a personal mention of my experience in
Mosier, Oregon and just let you know that I was at Mosier in
the--for the rail train derailment, and I'm happy to answer any
questions. It had a pretty significant impact on my personal
view in terms of both emergency preparedness but most
importantly in terms of the response. And after the panel is
through I'm happy to answer any questions about that
experience.
In closing, the Port of Seattle recognizes that our
infrastructure impacts the national economy and has a unique
role to play during a crisis. We stand ready to strengthen our
partnership with the Federal Government, including the
Department of Energy, to safeguard our critical infrastructure
and protect our communities.
I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bowman follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Commissioner.
Mr. Hairston, thank you. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF JOHN HAIRSTON, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE
OFFICER, BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY
Mr. Hairston. Thank you.
Ranking Member Cantwell, Secretary Moniz, I appreciate the
opportunity to testify today. My name is John Hairston. I'm the
Chief Administrative Officer with Bonneville Power
Administration.
Bonneville is a federal power marketing administration
within the United States of America Department of Energy which
markets electric power from 31 federal hydroelectric projects
and some non-federal projects in the Pacific Northwest.
Bonneville operates and maintains an extensive high voltage
electricity transmission system that integrates with every
major electric utility in the Pacific Northwest as well as
California and Canada.
Bonneville plays a critical role in responding to disaster
affecting the region's electricity grid. In my testimony today
I will describe how Bonneville is protecting the electricity
infrastructure and how it's preparing to respond to a
potentially massive Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.
Bonneville has hardened its electricity transmission system
and is investing in seismic related research for more than 20
years. We began assessing which areas and components of the
power system and most vulnerable to significant damage from the
earthquake and other natural disasters. These comprehensive
assessments from--having informed Bonneville's multifaceted,
seismic mitigation strategy and has allowed it to prioritize
where and when to upgrade and reinforce critical facilities and
equipment.
Electricity will be critical to the region's recovery in
the event of a natural disaster. Whether continuing to harden
facilities, protecting power system equipment or researching
the latest seismic mitigation tools and technology, Bonneville
takes this responsibility of shoring up its assets extremely
serious.
As Chief Administrative Officer I oversee Bonneville's
Office of Security and Continuity of Operations which
implements the Bonneville-wide program for physical, personnel,
information and infrastructure security, emergency management
and continuity of operations. This Office ensures Bonneville is
resilient and able to quickly recover from events that cause
operational impacts. With that goal in mind, Bonneville
recently actively participated in two emergency planning
activities.
In April 2016 Bonneville participated in the previously
mentioned Clear Path IV energy-focused disaster response
exercise hosted by the Department of Energy, Office of
Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. The exercise
scenario consisted of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent
tsunami occurring along the 700-mile-long Cascadia Subduction
Zone causing considerable damage to Washington, Oregon and
Northern California. The exercise scenario was designed to test
regional dependencies in the energy sector. The exercise was a
positive step forward in developing the national energy
response capability and served as an important forum for
building and strengthening linkages between government and
industry. The exercise also identified improvements that can be
made with respect to coordination between critical components
that must work together to quickly respond to a catastrophic
event. Bonneville will continue to work with the DOE Office of
Electricity and its regional energy partners to address gaps
that were identified by participating in this exercise.
In 2016, June 2016, Bonneville participated in the largest
FEMA exercise ever conducted in the region. Building from the
energy sector-specific Clear Path IV, Cascadia Rising also
simulated a 9.4 magnitude earthquake. For our part Bonneville
held a four-day exercise with its core emergency response
personnel and table top exercises for field staff across the
service territory. Bonneville tested its plan and transferred
complete control of its electric grid to a site hundreds of
miles from the potentially affected area.
Cascadia Rising and Clear Path IV proved to be successful
exercises for Bonneville in so far as they allowed employees
and workers to practice their training and test our
implementation plans. Bonneville will continue to participate
in these types of emergency response exercises so we become
well practiced and operationally ready to face real life
situations.
As the owner and operator of 75 percent of the region's
high voltage electric transmission system, Bonneville knows
investments in both physical security and cybersecurity is
vitally important to safely and reliably operating the electric
grid in a modern world.
We recently embarked on a multi-million-dollar physical
security program for critical substations concentrating on
perimeter security. This effort includes upgrading fencing,
lighting and improving detecting systems, cameras and alarms
and has led to more comprehensive security design standards for
wherever substation facilities are upgraded or new substations
facilities are constructed.
In the past two years we've increased our staffing around
cybersecurity from 12 employees to over 40 employees and
implemented a 24/7 cybersecurity operations and analysis
center. Bonneville has two dedicated teams to cybersecurity.
One team performs forensics and intelligence, incident response
and 24 hours a day handling of these type of issues. The other
team performs offensive research and security assessments.
Bonneville even conducts offensive cyber operations against our
own network to test, drill and improve our detection and
response.
In conclusion, our investments to make Bonneville a more
resilient organization from hardening and protecting our
infrastructure to the time that we spend to take, to prepare
and practice how we respond to a disaster will ultimately help
us limit damages to our electric power system and help the
region more quickly recover from a major disaster.
Ranking Member Cantwell, Secretary Moniz, thank you for
this opportunity to testify. I happily submit my written
testimony for the record and respond to any questions you may
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hairston follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Cantwell. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers, welcome, and thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF SCOT ROGERS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT & GENERAL
COUNSEL, F5 NETWORKS, INC.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you very much for having me, Senator.
Good afternoon.
For the record my name is Scot Rogers. I'm the Executive
Vice President and General Counsel of F5 Networks, Inc.
Again, I want to thank the Senator and the Secretary for
giving me this opportunity to testify and provide information
to this Committee and be a part of this panel to discuss
topics, we at F5 believe are of critical importance to the
safety and prosperity of our country. But I'd first like to
give you a little background on my employer, F5 Networks.
We're a worldwide leading developer and provider of
software-defined application services. We are based here in
Seattle with over 4,300 employees worldwide and applications
have become the gateway to critical and sensitive data and
services. And our mission is to help organizations deliver the
most secure, fast and reliable applications to anyone,
anywhere, at any time.
Our offerings include software products for network and
application security, access management and a number of other
network and application services. In conjunction with our
customers and partners across a variety of fields and
industries, we are closely watching the evolution of cyber
threat landscape for organizations in the 21st century.
As the Senator and the Secretary referred to repeatedly
during their presentations that this concept of innovation and
innovations driven here in the Northwest are creating new
challenges for the energy infrastructure. Disruptive technology
trends are dynamically altering the threat landscape for
organizations operating in today's world. The explosion of new
software applications, the emergence of cloud computing and the
Internet of things, combined with an increasingly mobile
workforce are leading to dissolution of the traditional
security perimeter.
Legacy security architectures are no longer adequate to
protect against the evolving threats posed by cyber criminals,
activists and state-sponsored espionage and sabotage. To borrow
from a commonly used analogy, the traditional security
architectures were akin to building a castle and a moat to
secure the king. The castle architectural relies upon utilizing
traditional network firewalls and other devices on the network
perimeter to monitor and block suspicious traffic at the
boundary of the network.
In today's world envision the software application as a
very mobile president traveling the world, who needs the
protection of its Secret Service bodyguards as he travels. As
the network perimeter or in this analogy, the castle walls,
become more and more irrelevant industries need to focus on
protecting the software applications that drive their business
and manage their critical infrastructure as well as verifying
the identities of those users who access those applications.
The leading technology industry firm, Gardner, estimates
that 90 percent of security investment is target at securing
this network perimeter but only 28 percent of the attacks are
focused there.
Conversely, only ten percent of the security investment is
focused on securing the software application itself while 72
percent of attacks are from application vulnerabilities and
stolen user credentials.
Our U.S. energy sector is not immune to these types of
evolving threats. In particular, the Internet of things with
the inclusion of new Smart meters, home power generation
devices with connections back into the power grid and the
various interfaces of the scattered networks creating a unique
set of challenges. All these new Smart devices are run by new
and innovative software applications whose access needs to be
managed and whose data needs to be protected.
And where will the state of emerging energy applications be
developed and reside as the world moves to a cloud centric
model? Again, these applications are being built and hosted
outside the castle walls.
All of these unsecured new devices create new threat
factors of attack that must be mitigated. The world of our
energy infrastructure, it isn't the theft of data that is the
biggest threat, but a disruption of service or destruction of
its means of delivery.
In December of last year hackers disabled portions of
Ukraine's power grid leaving over 200,000 residents without
power for several hours. In the attack on the Ukraine's power
grid, the hackers used compromised user credentials to remotely
log in to the SCADA network that controlled the grid. In this
instance remote workers weren't required to use two factor
authentication for remote log in which allowed the attackers to
hijack their credentials and gain crucial access to the systems
that control the breakers for the system.
The Department of Energy has taken steps to help secure our
nation's energy infrastructure with the issuance of its Energy
Sector Cybersecurity Framework Implementation Guidance
containing recommendations for implementation of the NIST
framework for improving critical infrastructure of
cybersecurity.
In the ever evolving world of technology it is important
that organizations stay vigilant to address these exponential
threats presented by new technologies and to avoid complacency.
A strong focus on protecting not just the networks
interconnected to our infrastructure but the software
applications that operate and support that infrastructure as
well as the users accessing those software applications it's
critical to the safety and security of our nation's energy
sector.
Through utilization of web application firewalls,
multifactor authentication and identity federation for secure
remote access, with consistent policy-based access controls and
security data analytics on user behavior, the energy sector can
evolve its security architecture to address the dissolution of
the network perimeter.
With that I would like to acknowledge the Committee and
thank them for giving the opportunity to recognize these
threats that are emerging and note that I'm happy to answer any
questions that the Committee may have, as well as to provide
any follow-up materials.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rogers follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Cantwell. Thank you. Thank you.
Mr. Imhoff, thank you so much for being here today.
Hopefully we will see you tomorrow as well, but thank you for
being here to testify at today's hearing.
STATEMENT OF CARL IMHOFF, MANAGER, GRID RESEARCH PROGRAM,
PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY
Mr. Imhoff. I will be there tomorrow.
Thank you very much, Senator Cantwell, for the opportunity
to appear. And thank you, Mr. Secretary, for joining us in the
beautiful Pacific Northwest. My mission today is to discuss
issues around grid resiliency and emergency response,
particularly as they relate to grid modernization.
My name is Carl Imhoff. I lead the Grid Research Program at
the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and I also
co-chair the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium which is
a membership of 13 national laboratories and over 100 industry
and academic partners supporting DOE's unified Grid
Modernization Initiative.
For more than two decades PNNL has supported power system
resilience and innovation for the State of Washington, the
Pacific Northwest and the nation. In that time, we lead in the
delivery to the nation, a network of 2,000 high speed,
synchrophasor monitors that monitor the nation 30 samples a
second, 24/7.
We've also delivered innovations in distributed control and
demand response with the promise of delivering demand at scale
and providing grid services faster, greener, cheaper and
supported the nation's largest Smart Grid demonstration in
doing so.
We're delivering high performance computing that's taking
security tools from days to seconds to converge and helping the
operators, such as Bonneville, monitor the system and avoid
outages and so we've had a phenomenal long record of support to
the grid. And we'll continue to do so going forward.
My assignment was to talk about the link between grid
modernization and security and resilience, but before I do I
have to frame my two key recommendations for the session. One,
important to deliver next generation, real time tools for
situational awareness, risk assessment and grid operations that
transform our nation's capacity to assess risk in real time and
help mitigate outages with assisted support for operators in
real time. Secondly, to improve the emergency response
capabilities leveraging new data sources and new analytic tools
to enhance both regional and local planning but also then
preparation for major extreme events.
So let me start with the highlights of why is the grid
important? What's changed in the landscape of the grid? And
then comment on how can grid modernization enhance our
resilience in emergency response?
The future power system is facing substantially more
complex conditions and risk going forward. Today we have
increased storm frequency and intensity. We see increased
interdependencies between grid systems and other critical
infrastructure such as natural gas pipelines, communications
and emerging market models.
New digital technology is transforming the availability of
new consumer services at the grid edge where it also increases
the attack planning and increases the cybersecurity challenge.
Overall, the grid faces increased complexity in supply, demand
and business models, and this is a grid that today is very
important to our economy but it's going to be more strategic
into the future.
Our current economy is increasingly digital but the
consumers are looking for more benefits from IT and intelligent
devices and all at the edge. Much of the past climate research
is showing that electrification is a key to going in terms of
de-carbonization. So the grid is essential today and it will
become increasingly more strategic in the future.
So how does a modernized grid support emergency response?
Let me frame three options.
First, it will deliver improved grid infrastructure
resilience such as new distribution feeders that better resist
natural and human threats and recover faster reducing the
fundamental need for emergency response. An example is Avista
Corp in Spokane which achieved 1.5 million avoided customer
outage minutes in 2013 from its Smart Grid Investment Grant
effort and advanced metering and distribution automation. They
also shortened average outages by ten percent, experienced 21
percent fewer outages and their participation in that
partnership with DOE led to an accelerated full system
modernization for Vista, accelerated by probably over a decade.
Enhanced real time tools and system visibility will reduce
the scope of outages, shorten the time utilities need to
identify the outage locations and optimize restoration planning
to get the lights back on more quickly. An example is the use
of synchophasor monitoring that would have given the Ohio
operators, had they had phasor measurement units, an hour and
40-minute warning that Cleveland was pulling away from the rest
of the system. The result would have been a much smaller
blackout and much faster recovery at much lower cost to the
taxpayers.
Upgraded planning tools will better handle the complexity
of variable generation and new markets and changing business
models, improving emergency response planning, especially for
extreme events such as seismic and major regional weather
emergencies.
So, how do we achieve these recommendations I offered?
Delivering real time tools will help operators better
understand risks and options to avoid outages with accuracy far
beyond current practice.
One promising opportunity is the delivery of near real time
risk contingency analysis that's basically looking at the
40,000 to 60,000 outlets and saying if we lose certain numbers
of these what does that do to the security of our grid?
Today operators conduct power flow to identify and rank all
system risks. We've accelerated this analysis with advanced
computing to take the computation from days to seconds. In the
case of the Western interconnection, this method cut the
computation run from 26 hours to 7 seconds. This improvement
gives operators near real time situational awareness of risks
and options to mitigate outages.
Experiments at PNNL's control rooms, that you'll see
tomorrow, with grid operators showed a 30 percent improvement
in their ability to diagnose and respond to test cases of
outages using these new tools.
And an emergency--emerging advanced and planning tools is
DOE's commission tool to assess the risk of extremely rare but
large cascading events and outages. We, PNNL, worked with
ERCOT, Siemens and EPRI to develop an extreme event tool that
transformed the utility's ability to conduct such analyses and
better prepares the industry to respond to the new NERC
standards in terms of extreme events.
An increasingly important element of improved resilience is
grid flexibility. You get flexibility in two big ways.
One is energy storage and also advanced distributed
controls that the Secretary mentioned earlier. Widespread
deployment of energy storage for multiple grid applications
requires significant reduction of life cycle costs of energy
storage and a validation of the value for the value
propositions and multiple grid applications.
To reduce storage costs while improving life cycle
performance PNNL is actively engaged in research and the
discovery and development of next generation materials and
early PNNL R and D advances have been licensed to several
companies including UniEnergy which is located in Washington
State and is deploying stationary flow batteries for grid scale
applications globally.
Through DOE and Washington State Clean Energy funding we
are partnered also with Avista, Snohomish, DUD, Puget Sound
Energy, to validate the performance and use cases for field
deployed grid storage.
A second source of flexibility is advanced distributed
control theory. Transactive control concepts, a blending of
traditional controls and economic incentives to engage
distributive resources at scale and beyond normal utility
boundaries have been demonstrated in the Pacific Northwest
Smart Grid Demonstration Project and are being extended in the
Clean Energy Transactive Campus Project, a partnership between
DOE and the Department of Commerce. This project will help
demonstrate the benefit of demand side controls across multiple
buildings and campuses that can provide load flexibility to
reduce peak demand and manage renewable ramping.
Turning to specific emergency response tools, PNNL supports
DOE's Office of Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration
(ISER) by developing technologies to aid emergency response.
We're launching an effort to support ISER with automated
analysis of digital satellite imagery to quickly assess
infrastructure damage. It's at work today in the State of
Louisiana.
PNNL is also supporting ISER during national emergencies
with real time visualization and communication platforms in
partnership with HAMMER, the federal training center you'll see
in Richland tomorrow.
Finally, in terms of cybersecurity response, PNNL developed
a program that, by the end of next month, will provide cyber
support to the utilities that generate 75 percent of the
nation's electricity. This is a DOE development concept in
terms of cyber risk information sharing. It's now led by NERC
and industry. The sensors and concepts came from PNNL and we
continue to provide analytics for that very important exercise.
The next step in that journey is to find ways to engage the
small and mid-size utilities more effectively.
So in conclusion, a modernized grid should substantially
improve emergency response by delivering a more resilient
system, providing new planning and real time tools to better
identify and mitigate outage risks.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments. Thank
you for your long leadership in terms of Smart Grid and grid
modernization.
And thank you, Mr. Secretary, for delivering the first
integrated grid strategy in my 30-year career in the national
labs.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Imhoff follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Cantwell. Well thank you, Mr. Imhoff.
I will note though, we've had several stops on this tour
already and in each stop the Secretary has gone out of his way
to emphasize how important the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory is to the country.
Secretary Moniz. No, no, I didn't say that.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. And to the region.
I just want to thank him, and thank you for being here as a
representative of that.
Secretary Moniz. He wants a raise.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. Well, give him one.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. So, Dr. Best, thank you so much. We have
saved the best for last.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. So thank you----
STATEMENT OF DR. LYNN BEST, CHIEF ENVIRONMENTAL OFFICER,
SEATTLE CITY LIGHT
Dr. Best. Madam Chairwoman and Secretary Moniz, I want to
thank you on behalf of Seattle City Light for the opportunity
to testify today before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee.
My name is Lynn Best, and I am the Environmental Officer
for City Light. Seattle City Light provides reliable, renewable
and environmentally responsible power to the residents of
Seattle and neighboring communities. City Light has been
greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility
to achieve this distinction.
My testimony today will focus on electric utility
resilience in the face of climate change. I will cover City
Lights' recently completed Climate Adaptation Plan, our
participation in the Department of Energy's Partnership for
Energy Sector Climate Resilience and two actual events that
reflect the risks identified in the plan, the Oso mudslide and
the Goodell Creek Fire.
While City Light owns no fossil fuel resources and obtains
90 percent of its power from hydroelectric resources it--we are
affected by climate change.
In 2013 as part of the resiliency strategy for our utility,
City Light committed to researching the impacts of climate
change on the utility and developing an adaptation plan
including actions to minimize these impacts. City Light's
Climate Adaptation Plan evaluates how City Light is at risk
from climate change, the vulnerability from our operations and
infrastructure to these risks and the potential magnitude of
the impacts. It then uses this information to help prioritize
potential adaptation strategies.
Seattle City Light is also one of 18 electric utilities in
the nation participating in Department of Energy's Partnership
for Energy Sector Climate Resiliency. This partnership allows
utilities to exchange knowledge and best practices as well as
receive recognition for their achievements. This partnership
also promotes investment in technologies and practices and
policies that will enable resilient and modern energy system.
City Light looks forward to our continued collaboration with
DOE and other utilities as we work together in this
partnership.
The importance of taking action is illustrated by two
recent events.
On March 22, 2014 a 300-acre landslide occurred in Oso,
Washington that killed 30 people and destroyed a local
community. This happened during a March that was the wettest in
history. The slide which occurred to the north of City Light's
transmission line from the Skagit Hydro project caused minor
damage to one tower and came within feet of causing significant
damage to the line. The Oso slide is an example of the impacts
that we are concerned about with climate change. As the
frequency and intensity of heavy participation increases, these
loose sedimentary soils are more likely to slide. If the Oso
slide had happened on the south side of the valley our
transmission lines would have been destroyed for about a mile,
at a minimum and potentially more.
In anticipation of this becoming an increasing risk, City
Light has applied twice for Federal Emergency Management Act
(FEMA) grants to retrofit six towers in this area to limit the
amount of damage that could occur from a similar or smaller
slide.
While the proximity of Seattle City Light's transmission
line constituted a significant risk to the utility, it also
provided the opportunity for us to be of assistance to the
community when the main arterial of Washington State, Route 530
between the cities of Darrington and Arlington, was destroyed
in the slide. A single lane, gravel access road that was our
access road for our transmission line was used as a lifeline to
bypass that section and reach the community of Darrington.
The Goodell Creek fire started on August 10, 2015, and
spread to the woods near the Skagit Hydroelectric Project a few
days later. Seattle City Light operates three dams and power
houses at Ross, Diablo and Gorge Reservoirs in this area. These
facilities produce 20 percent of the power consumed by our
customers.
The fire changed direction suddenly and burned under the
lines forcing the utility to shut down transmission lines that
carry electricity from the project. Spill gates at all three
dams were opened to maintain river flows to protect fish.
Within 15 minutes--with 15 minutes of warning City Light needed
to replace 20 percent of the power needed to serve our load.
The inability to deliver electricity from the Skagit also
cost us $100,000 per day. The company town of Diablo was
evacuated quickly and Newhalem reduced to only essential
personnel. City Light fire fighters worked to protect our
assets, the power houses and residences and other structures.
The total cost to utility was estimated at $5.3 million.
Wildland fire risk is one that the utility's climate
scientists had identified well before the Goodell Creek fire
last August. More and longer lasting fires have been occurring
on the West side of the Cascades over the past few years. City
Light had already completed fire wise projects to protect
buildings, and while the fire worked its way to the projects,
it stopped before damaging buildings.
The utility also is applying for mitigation funds from FEMA
as part of the repairs following this fire to replace the
timber saddles that were part of the Newhalem Creek plant
penstock. In addition, we are training our fire fighters in
wildfire fighting.
In addition to the physical threat we had to move our
balancing authority to our Boundary project. Unfortunately,
Boundary has limited storage. It's a run of the river project.
And as a result, there was fear that there would not be enough
water available at Boundary and we would have to declare a
capacity emergency.
We were able to contact our fellow utilities upstream, and
we want to thank Avista and Pend Oreille PUD for providing
water to allow us to continue to keep Boundary as our balancing
authority. This was an excellent example of utilities providing
assistance under emergency situations.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Best follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Dr. Best.
Again, thanks to all the witnesses today. You obviously
represent the interests of our infrastructure across a variety
of different areas in your testimony and help illuminate some
of the challenges that we have been dealing with here in the
Northwest. So thank you for that.
I would like to begin with you, Mr. Ezelle, as it related
to some of the things that you have mentioned, in regards to
the National Guard. Obviously, you and I have worked together
on Oso and on the two major fires that we have had in our
state, so we have had a lot of chances to see the operations on
the ground.
In talking with you during some of those events and now
hearing from Commissioner Bowman, I just want to ask you on
this issue of rail response since I used to say Ports-R-Us, but
I think we should say Ports-R-Us and Railroads-R-Us. If you
have this many, if you are a state of our position and export
opportunity, we have become central for pushing product.
Obviously crude by rail, is a major shift change in what we
have seen. How are you best preparing for the issues as it
relates to the population centers across our state?
Mr. Ezelle. Madam Chair, thanks for the opportunity to
comment on that.
The Washington State Legislature realized the criticality
of this issue and in this biennium they allocated funding for
four FTEs to the Washington Military Department and Emergency
Management Division. Our specific purpose is to work with the
counties and communities along these railroads, both the
incoming rail route along the Columbia Gorge, but also,
secondarily, the outgoing routes where the empties travel
because the empties also have a hazard themselves.
What we are doing is working with the local Emergency
Planning Committees to build detailed response plans within the
communities, within the counties so if there is an accident of
the type that we saw in Mosier that our communities are ready
and able to respond.
Senator Cantwell. Commissioner Bowman, did you want to add
something about your experience from Mosier?
Ms. Bowman. Absolutely, thank you.
Maybe to put a little bit of my remarks into context, I
wasn't at the derailment but I was there within about three
minutes of the derailment. And so I saw the first flames go up,
and I was one of the first to call 911 in response.
When after the derailment I ran down to the site, I got
within about 200 yards of the derailment and the fire which, I
think, as you know, Senator Cantwell, was about 300 feet from
the local school.
A couple of things that really stood out for me from that
experience was, with all due respect to our first responders in
those remote rural areas of the state, this is Oregon, but you
know, it's right across the river from Bingen, Washington.
With all due respect to the first responders, they're all
volunteer fire fighters, they had no experience in dealing with
oil fires and that was immediately evident. Obviously, a fire
caused by oil is much different in terms of the way you fight
it than is a fire caused by, excuse me, anything else. The
first thing that I did was call Burlington Northern, and I
wanted to call out the Burlington Northern for providing expert
advice in terms of what the response would be.
What I learned from the experience was that we would have
foam trailers coming out to the site. Unfortunately, the foam
trailers to deal with the fire didn't arrive. It was almost
four hours before they arrived. That was probably the other big
take away for me.
I immediately called our CEO at the Port of Seattle and our
CEO at the Port of Tacoma and our Fire Chief at the Port of
Seattle and directed them to provide any and all resources to
the fire that needed to be.
I'm proud that the Port of Seattle provided resources to
the Port of Portland who was unable to deploy the foam trailers
that arrived about four hours after the fire started. You may
have heard later that the foam--that the fire was burning so
hot at that point that the foam was disintegrating before it
could even get to the rail cars.
So, I guess the biggest take away from this is that, as you
probably know, Senator Cantwell, it would have been a wildfire
of catastrophic proportion had there been any wind that day. It
was an absolute miracle that there was no wind. That's what the
Columbia Gorge is known for, is wind, and there was no wind
that day.
There's no way that anybody could have responded quickly
enough. And so, the things that I would ask the Committee and
the Federal Government to consider are a few things.
Providing more resources in terms of training emergency
responders in these rural communities. As you noted earlier,
it's much different than in an urban area. Having foam trailers
30 miles apart is not adequate. They can't get there in time.
I would say that we need better evacuation plans. There was
no plan in this community for evacuating. Literally, residents
were sitting trying to figure out what to do. I was on the
scene for about two hours. When the third car started to ignite
I decided it's time to go home and pack and find a way out of
town. By then the freeway was shut down. The only way to leave
the town was through a rural, gravel road that is 12 miles back
into the town of Hood River. Had there been a wildfire that
route would have been closed off as well. So if we're going to
have crude by rail we need to have better emergency response.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you.
As a Port of Seattle Commissioner familiar with our
waterfront access, I know we have had the mayor on some of our
hearings and briefings on this. He has said he would not direct
first responders to respond to an incident in the tunnel in
Seattle if such an incident happened. How do you look at that
same incident happening anywhere in downtown Seattle?
Ms. Bowman. Well certainly the Port of Seattle would offer,
again, any and all resources. My understanding is that the
Seattle Fire Department should be the first responder at that
point. But I don't believe, I'm not sure that they've been
trained adequately.
Senator Cantwell. Do you, having witnessed that incident (I
don't know exactly where to put it on a scale, but I would say
it is not one of the most significant events that have
happened), but can you imagine that not having catastrophic
effects if the Mosier incident happened in Seattle? Is there a
way that event could have happened without catastrophic effects
to us?
Ms. Bowman. No.
You know, again, in the case of Mosier, it was only the
fact that there was no wind that day. But in the city of
Seattle for something like that to happen in a tunnel, but I
don't know how you----
Senator Cantwell. Or anywhere on the waterfront.
Ms. Bowman. Or anywhere on the waterfront.
But it is, given my experience in Mosier, it's something
that the Port of Seattle is taking a much closer look at how we
can better coordinate with the other local agencies because I
don't think it's something that we've really adequately planned
for in the past.
We haven't--we don't export oil at the Port of Seattle or
at the Port of Tacoma so we haven't had those immediate
problems, but certainly the trains go through the city, and we
want to work with the railroads to make sure that there is
adequate response.
Senator Cantwell. I think it could be greatly impacted by
that because, obviously, the rail goes by your facilities. It
is something I am glad you are looking at.
On cyber I wanted to focus on Mr. Rogers. Thank you for
your testimony. When you are talking about this perimeter issue
versus the software attacks which I feel like is never
changing. Someone is going to cook up a new tool a week.
Mr. Rogers. Right.
Senator Cantwell. So I get what you are saying. Instead of
just protecting the perimeter, let's look at the overall
structure and infrastructure and ways in.
How do we create a strong defense? What are the steps and
tools we should be taking to address this shift? And what would
be the three or four things we should focus on?
Mr. Rogers. Well, it's interesting. I picked up on Mr.
Hairston's comments about some of the efforts that they're
doing with their facilities. The implementation of their
security operation center, for example, using some, I'm sure,
using some of the advanced data analytics that are becoming
common within the industry now for security purposes to track
user behavior, to determine whether or not access controls are
properly being utilized, to determine if a user is acting in a
way or accessing an application they shouldn't be. I think that
user access piece is one really important piece of that.
Secondly, the follow up to that was the use of the security
analytics through having a SOC, as we like to call it in the
parlance of the industry, the Security Operations Center. To
monitor that traffic is becoming increasingly important because
you can't just have a static type of barrier to prevent attack.
You need to have people monitoring and watching behavior on the
network.
I think actually focusing the strengths of your new
perimeter around the application itself, wherever it may
reside, increasingly it's knotting your own network. It may be
in a cloud somewhere, it may be in a hosted environment, or it
may reside on an application on a device somewhere. So the
ability to protect that application through use of like a web
application firewall and examining the vulnerabilities of the
application itself and how you protect against manipulation of
those vulnerabilities.
The idea is while the moat still needs to be there for your
traditional network and the wall still needs to be there, it's
not enough anymore. You really need to focus on a deeper level
of security with more analytics and a more proactive approach.
I think in the past one of the things that's been discussed
in a risk profile, particularly here in the U.S. with the risk
from terrorism, there's been this concept of failure of
imagination. If you can imagine the risk, then you should be
able to try to find a way to defend against it. Where we run
into problems is we lose that imagination about what the next,
where the next attack could come from.
Senator Cantwell. Well it is certainly asymmetric on all
fronts.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. And certainly when it comes to cyber, it
is asymmetric.
I, again, want to thank our National Guard. The fact that
we have a concentration of software and the Air Force and
National Guard, they have really taken a lead on, and the
University of Washington on this issue of creating, step by
step, of really cyber hygiene that they believe that people
should be following as well as helping to create a workforce
that is focused on getting us the best and brightest in this
area.
Mr. Imhoff, what do you think about what Mr. Rogers is
saying as it relates to approaching this more from a software
perspective and what we need to do from the national laboratory
to help with that effort?
Mr. Imhoff. So I agree with him.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Imhoff. There's still some work to be done on the
perimeters. We learned in the Smart Grid Investment Grants that
made the small and mid-sized utilities just can make huge
progress by learning basic good housekeeping in terms of
maintaining your perimeter and doing training, et cetera. But
we need to go beyond that. We need to deliver advanced
analytics and part related to crisp that focuses on the
business side of the systems.
The other attack plan of interest is the control side of
the grid. Part of it is design, next generation controls that
are inherently resilient and have adaptive response to threats,
all hazards, not just cyber, but the control system helps let
the system down and keeps it from propagating throughout the
control system. That's part of the strategy, the other part of
anticipating where we're heading.
We recently helped NERC put in place their first designed
basic threat assessment, looking at cyber, which basically says
who are the actors? What are their intentions? What tools do
they have? What options might they deploy to help attack?
It's really getting into the analytics figuring out where
do you most need the analytics? How do you prioritize your
defense inside the perimeter, if you will?
And as you said, that game will never end. It will
constantly go and go and go. But that scenario where we can
create more distance between us and the adversaries in terms of
being more strategic and more systematic from the electric
industry standpoint in terms of how do we anticipate and
prepare the defense of the analytics.
Senator Cantwell. I am going to turn it over to the
Secretary, but I do want to ask since you are looking at this
from our national lab perspective. One of the things that we
have discussed here locally is the notion that we need to
continue to upgrade, that some of the security, as was said, is
in that application and if we can just continue to get people
to upgrade there are great securities in that. Now, of course,
we are a software state, and we like upgrades.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. Well, let's just say we like upgrades
when they work.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. And work effectively.
Should we be looking at this from a different mindset? I
mean, is this a continual game of how fast can we run ahead of
the hackers or is there some level that we should be trying to
get people to adjust to as it relates to the software side of
the equation? That good hygiene is an upgrade once a year or
every two years or something of that nature because we are
fixing so many of the identifiable problems.
So any thoughts, Mr. Imhoff or Mr. Rogers, on that?
Mr. Imhoff. That's a tough question.
I think that the intent in the Grid Modernization
Initiative is to build very strong relationships with the
vendor community and try to embed best practice and more
resilience to the point that Scot mentioned in the next
generations of grid vendor tools that are deployed out to the
systems. I think there's a lot of room for improvement in
ensuring enhanced resilience in those software systems that get
deployed out into the future.
One big challenge we have is in the old days most of the
grid upgrades were physical assets and going into the future
they're going to be digital assets, very different lifetimes
and the need for more frequent upgrade and transition, et
cetera. So, that's going to be a really different world that we
face going forward.
One last comment I would offer is that to unleash the
innovation in this space we need to have access to data. We
need to preserve the privacy in that data. We need to preserve
the security issues around that data.
The Department, through ARPA-E, has been investing in
several new grid programs looking at establishing data
repositories that are anomalized such that basically you remove
the privacy issues in the data but you maintain the physics
that make that data useful for looking at innovations. I think
this notion of data repositories that are safe and secure, that
are available to the innovation community, is a big step
forward to help us unleash the innovation but do it in a way
that protects privacy and give them data sets that are safe.
I think then, we can raise the bar in terms of the quality
of these software upgrades, that the experience of the software
engineers and control engineers market the utilities, et cetera
and you'll see that tomorrow.
Senator Cantwell. Before Mr. Rogers replies, I know the
subject can seem very dry or very geeky in some ways, but I
guarantee you, it's not.
When our own data base in the Congress was hacked, the
personnel system and the security clearance of every employee
that had a security clearance was violated. You were putting
the United States security at great risk, and this is going to
continue, to say nothing of the personal side of each employee
whose personal data and information was put at risk. We, as a
nation, were undermined by those security clearances that were
given to each of those individuals.
That is something a foreign agent can act on or take
advantage of so getting this right is very important. While I
wish the Federal Government was an early adopter, let's just
say, Mr. Secretary, they are not an early adopter. We are, kind
of, a late adopter when it comes to technology. So I think we
are a good example, if you will, in that regard of what is
happening with a large sector of our society being very late to
moving forward on the latest and greatest.
So Mr. Rogers, my original question, how should we look at
this? Is there a new timeframe we should be looking at to stay
ahead of people just in the sense of good hygiene?
Mr. Rogers. I think that brings up a couple of points.
I think there are some opportunities for good hygiene. And
I think, as Mr. Imhoff noted earlier, that just through their
studies they found some low hanging fruit that some of the
smaller producers and infrastructure providers could do to
really help the resiliency.
I think that one of the challenges that everybody faces is
we have this innovation. We have these growing technologies,
and it's the people to operate them.
I think one of the areas, to the point of doing the
upgrades, managing the infrastructure, managing the security
operation centers and so forth, talent development is going to
be critical as well. I think I know that there's some efforts
that have been going on that have been mentioned earlier that
were very important to get the talent within the area to help
run these systems.
I know that, for example, an initiative that F5 did, is
we've reached out and have been pairing with the military for
training on our products for military veterans as they leave
the service.
I think it's these kinds of joint public/private types of
efforts that can really go a long ways toward, you know,
developing the talent pool because you can have all the
software in the systems in the world, but if you don't have the
people to operate them or the people that work in the security
operations centers to monitor them, then you're really behind
the game.
Secretary Moniz. Can I comment there?
Senator Cantwell. Yes, so I will turn it over to you, Mr.
Secretary.
Secretary Moniz. Oh, okay.
Senator Cantwell. You can have as much time as you would
like.
Secretary Moniz. Alright.
Senator Cantwell. To ask any of the witnesses questions.
Secretary Moniz. Okay, well first I want to comment on
these last two comments a little bit in terms of your question
about what steps need to be taken. Actually, Mr. Rogers
mentioned earlier in the Ukraine context multifactor
authentication is a nominally, straightforward, not always to
implement approach that can help a lot in these situations.
Also, Mr. Imhoff's comment, I just wanted to make a comment
that goes, it's much more broad than this issue. It's a common
issue. It applies here. And that is as we get more and more
into a world where large scale computation, big data analytics,
machine learning all become part of doing business here the
data access is over and over again a big problem. It applies as
much to cancer as it does to cybersecurity.
So I think this question of data access is something that
the Congress may need to, kind of, deal with in a very broad
sense.
Senator Cantwell. You mean in the repository suggestion
that Mr.----
Secretary Moniz. Well, yeah, I mean from the cancer issue,
it's the same thing. There's a lot of data out there but it's
hard to get it, proprietary, all kinds of issues how it's
heterogeneous in editions. So it's a big problem, a broad
problem, and certainly applies here as well.
Well, if I have the floor?
Senator Cantwell. Yes, go right ahead.
Secretary Moniz. First of all, terrific panel and actually
I have questions for everybody but I will not indulge myself in
that. So maybe quick questions and quick answers. Maybe I'll
just get three questions out.
First, Mr. Ezelle, Cascadia Rising, you're Washington
National Guard, dot, dot, dot. What's the first thing you think
you're going to do if it actually happens?
[Laughter.]
Secretary Moniz. Number two, let me just ask the three
questions, then go back.
Mr. Hairston, maybe I should know this given Bonneville's
relationship to the Department, but what would be your
assessment from Bonneville about the security and ability to
respond to a problem with large power transformers,
particularly I don't mean just one goes out, but let's say a
coordinated action taken against them?
And third for Dr. Best, in your adaptation plan I believe
one of the actions put in there is so-called retreating.
Dr. Best. Yes.
Secretary Moniz. Taking facilities away from at risk
places. How big a challenge is that? I mean, are you talking
about relocating everything or just very small number of
keynotes.
So those are my three questions.
Mr. Ezelle. Well Mr. Secretary, I'll take a stab at the
first one.
I mentioned that probably the key thing that we took away
from Cascadia Rising, at least in the emergency management
division, was perspective. And it really, truly turned how we
look at a catastrophic event on its head.
And in terms of the first thing that we're going to do,
obviously, for those of us who are in state government, I think
the locals, the first thing is going to be to, essentially,
take care of ourselves and our families. So, do I have to dig
out of my house, has it collapsed on me, will I be able to get
to work to function?
And so, that really drove home to us the fact that we need
to have extremely detailed response plans. So for every
emergency support function whether it's transportation, whether
it's communications, whether it's power, all integrated
because, you know, what happens in transportation is going to
affect what happens in ESF12. It's going to affect what happens
in ESF6 and 8.
And so all of our detailed planning needs to be to an
extreme level of granularity but then the big take away that we
have is that those plans need to be run by somebody else
because a significant number of us, who are, we are, who the
state may be planning on responding are going to be victors.
And so, it's a case of really, truly putting together that
planning, have somebody else outside of our area to be able to
run those initial few days of the response until those of us
who are in the area can dig out and then start establishing our
capability and then starting to take it back.
Hopefully that answers your question.
Secretary Moniz. Yeah, interesting, yeah. I figure just
chaos basically.
Mr. Hairston. Alright, Mr. Secretary, in terms of the
second question in respect to our ability to address an attack
on a number of substations and subsequently the impact on
transformers, it's interesting.
I think we're growing in our ability to be able to respond.
I think you might be aware the industry has done a lot of
coordination on looking at spare transformer parts, what we can
do to, maybe, leverage the number or the amount of inventory
that's existing.
But, you know, being able to respond or replace
transformers is a difficult measure. It takes months, if not
years sometimes, to get the replacement transformers. So that's
why it is important for the industry to work together.
The other thing is that and these are so expensive you're
not going to make that type of capital investment and have
those types of, you know, that type of inventory sitting on the
bench, so to speak. So, you know, we've got what is called a
Spare Transformer Equipment Program that's industry-wide, that
would get a lot more involvement, and I think, positions us to
be able to respond.
I know there's been some thought of a, I want to say, the
strategic transformer reserve program that's been, again, part
of the FAST Act, that contemplates being able to respond in
terms of a disruptive event. I think that would be a good
complement to the existing program. So that's something that I
think is worth definitely exploring for the industry.
Secretary Moniz. Good. We'll have a report on that. You're
probably working on it. Some people from BPA at least are
working on it for Congress this year.
Mr. Hairston. Yes.
Dr. Best. Okay, retreating.
So, I want to point out that retreating was the fourth of
four different strategies that we put forward. We also said it
was a strategy, sort of, of last resort because of the
consequences of it.
Mostly what we've looked at----
Secretary Moniz. That's why I asked about it.
Dr. Best. Yeah, yeah.
So we've looked at hardening of infrastructure like we are
looking at the Oso-type landslide situation. We're looking at
increasing resilience, like fire wise, for our facilities.
But we looked at retreating where you have a facility that
is in, say, a flood plain that you know is going to be
repeatedly at risk. And luckily for Seattle right now it
doesn't look as if Seattle City Light has critical
infrastructure in the areas that are going to be flooded in the
city. And so, we're looking at the, what I would say, lesser
infrastructure in those areas.
But I think also this is a reason why it's so important to
work on climate preparation now because the decisions utilities
are making now will last for 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 years.
And if we do the, make the right decisions now we can greatly
reduce the impacts on our customers, on the utility and also on
the environment.
And so, I would say that one of the reasons for
highlighting that in the plan is to say we really don't want to
be put in the position of having to move massive infrastructure
or desert it and recreate it somewhere else.
So I think that's one of the reasons that to be aware that
you can't harden everything necessarily and you want to be
careful about where you put things.
Senator Cantwell. Well, I would just add to that, Dr. Best.
I know we are going to wrap up here but if your other
utility associates were here today they would be singing the
same song as it relates to our wildfires and the amount of
transmission that burned up and the costs that are now left
with utilities to try to replace that in many parts of our
state. Millions of dollars of infrastructure in an afternoon
just gone. So figuring this out is really, really important for
us.
I just want to thank the panelists and again, the
Secretary, for your testimony. You have given us some good
ideas to think about.
As a summation point from my side I definitely am hearing
and sensing both from you, Mr. Secretary, but also from our
witnesses, that we are both making preparatory plans and we are
both thinking of these challenges but we need to somehow marry
them together. The state and local and fed need to figure out
how we continue to have this discussion and marry our solutions
so we can give the American people our best efforts on these
challenging new energy problems.
I just thank everybody for being here today to give us that
insight, and again, you, for traveling to the Northwest.
Again, this subject is probably something we would like to
put off to another day, but the realities of it are that they
are affecting us right now. So I thank you for your willingness
to come here and do that.
I don't know if you have any concluding remarks you would
like to make?
Secretary Moniz. No, just to thank you for the hearing and
thank the witnesses because there's some very interesting
information there. We'll follow up.
Senator Cantwell. Great.
Thank you all very much.
Secretary Moniz. Thank you.
Senator Cantwell. We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:39 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
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