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Granite State ahead of curve on port security

By SHAWNE K. WICKHAM
Union Leader Staff
February 26, 2006

Even as the uproar over port security was erupting last week in Washington, D.C., New Hampshire folks were quietly updating federal officials on their own homegrown efforts to make cargo containers more secure.

Ray Gagnon is the project director for the Canada-U.S. Cargo Security Project, a group of state and federal officials from both countries that is working on ensuring the safety of cargo that enters North America on international container ships. On Thursday Gagnon was in Washington with other project leaders to brief officials from the Department of Homeland Security about the group's progress.

In late December, high-tech sensors were installed on a sealed container that left Germany on a cargo ship, bound for a Londonderry-based company that sells heating equipment. It was the first of three planned tests to see whether it is technologically - and economically - feasible to watch individual containers as they move around the globe.

Too early to tell

Gagnon told the Sunday News until the next two tests are completed this spring, it's premature to discuss publicly what the group has learned from the December experiment, which he termed "very successful."

But he said, "We had a zero error rate, and I think it looks very promising that this technology has a lot of merit and a lot of value."

The cargo security project grew several years ago out of a working group of law enforcement officials in New Hampshire, Vermont and Canada who met regularly to discuss common concerns, including motorcycle gangs, smuggling and drug trafficking. One topic was the security of the approximately two million containers that come into North America through the ports of Montreal and Halifax each year.

That issue took on added urgency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks elevated concerns about other potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited by terrorists.

So with minimal funding and off-the-shelf parts, the group put together a test: Tracking a shipment of lightbulbs from a manufacturing facility in Slovakia until its arrival at the Osram Sylvania plant in Hillsborough.

Moving forward

Now the project has entered a second phase. With $1.1 million in funding from the various partner agencies - New Hampshire's share was $300,000 - and technical expertise from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the new tests use secret, high-tech sensors to monitor what happens both outside and inside the containers.

"The basic idea is to make sure we can detect intrusion into the box or any diversion from its normal route," explained Thomas Colantuono, U.S. Attorney for New Hampshire, who co-chairs the project. "And so far with the two tests we've done, I think it's pretty clear the technology does exist for those two items."

More tests

The next two tests are planned for March and late April, and involve companies in Maine and New York, which have joined the Northeast partnership.

Donald Bliss is director of the Center for Infrastructure Expertise in Portsmouth, which is administering the project.

He noted the monitoring equipment not only detects attempts to tamper with a container, but also captures the environment inside, such as the effects of temperature, humidity and G-forces. That data will be critical to developing a dependable system.

"Because nobody has really figured out or set the standards for how sensitive these monitoring devices have to be," Bliss explained. "If you have a million containers in transit that all have monitoring devices and there's a four percent false-alarm rate, that's unacceptable, because you're going to be setting off these alarms and putting people into alert and stopping ships."

Taking care

There's another reason you don't want a lot of false alarms, said Bliss, a former state fire marshal. "If a fire alarm goes off in a building five times in a day, the fifth time you're less likely to pay attention to it," he said. "That's the sort of thing we need to avoid."

The group is also working on ways for the shipping industry to alert first responders if a problem does arise, Bliss said. "We're trying to anticipate, when these devices become a regular fact of life on cargo containers, having the protocols and procedures in place so that number one, attacks are thwarted, and number two, you're not interrupting the supply chain every day, because time is very critical."

The group carried out a live training exercise last fall. Called Double Impact, it simulated a hijacked container being trucked across the Canadian border.

"It was basically to test protocol responses and procedures, and how would they coordinate this between the two nations," Gagnon said.

The group learned one lesson they did not anticipate, when the power failed in a small Quebec village where part of the operation was based. "What we found is that when an incident really occurs - like the electricity going out - people revert to the language they're most familiar with," Gagnon said. "We were hearing a lot of French."

Gagnon said all the promise of the monitoring technology will be wasted if industry balks at the cost. But he said, "Our friends at Livermore are saying with economies of scale, the product will probably be in the range of $50 to $100 per shipment."

"That all of a sudden is an affordable item."

Holger Hinse is director of import planning and purchasing at BBT North America of Londonderry, formerly Buderus Hydronic Systems, the company that participated in December's test shipment.

Will pay for assurances

Hinse believes companies like his will be willing to pay more for container security if they can be assured by the government that installing such devices will smooth the way for their shipments to enter the country. And while the government could make such measures mandatory, it would be better to have industry adopt them voluntarily, he said.

He said he does not believe the public understands how dependent this country's economy is on the shipping industry. "You don't even need to cut the oil supplies," he said "If you don't have container imports from Asia for a certain time, maybe even two weeks, the shelves will be pretty empty."

Once the results of this year's tests are made public, Gagnon said he hopes the folks at Homeland Security will do something they haven't so far: Provide funding for the project.

Only one part

Meanwhile, he said the technology, while promising, isn't even the most important aspect of the cross-border effort.

"We have brought together such a diverse group of individuals," he said. "We're talking about nuclear physicists talking to Border Patrol guys. We're talking transportation engineers meeting and discussing with Quebec government officials on how to develop things.

"We really have brought together a cross-section of individuals to work together on a common problem, and I think that's the real success of this exercise. And that's what should be replicated."

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