Investigative Report: Marin County Water System Vulnerable to Al-Qaeda Attack

By Matt Smith Tue., Sep. 15 2009 at 12:30 PM

Categories: Government, Media

Does everyone want to live in Marin?

The Center For Investigative Reporting, the Berkeley nonprofit that recently formed a team of sleuths to take up where downsized California newspapermen and women left off, came out slugging earlier this month. It published a scintillating piece demonstrating Marin County has failed to protect its water treatment system from terrorist attack.

The report, authored by longtime San Francisco investigative ace G.W. Schultz, indicated that Marin County used federal grants to obtain $100,000 worth of surveillance equipment to detect Al-Qaeda agents should they target the county's water treatment system. But for all county bureaucrats know, Osama Bin Laden may be personally ladling noxious materials into 190,000 Marin residents' water supplies while they sleep. That's because, even four years after the Marin water treatment geniuses got their new equipment, most of it is still in its original packaging -- unused.

According to Schultz, Homeland Security misdeeds don't stop in the North Bay.

More than five years after 60 Minutes reported that the bulk of $10 billion in Homeland Security money was not being used to make America safer, CIR's California Watch reports that money is still being wasted. Read the four-part multimedia series here, here, and here.