UASI Grants More Widely Distributed

On July 25 the Department of Homeland Security announced $1.8 billion in federal Homeland Security grants. This included $781.6 million for the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) program.

Sixty urban areas have been selected to participate in the UASI program. This is up from 46 cities last year and is the largest number of jurisdictions to participate in the program.

There are seven so-called Tier I UASI recipients:

• New York: $144,189,000 in FY2008 UASI grants
• Newark/Jersey City: $34,988,000
• Los Angeles: $70,402,500
• San Francisco: $37,155,000
• Chicago: $45,861,500
• Houston: $37,500,000
• Washington D.C. $59,800,500

The "urban area" receiving the grant includes much more than the principal city.

The fifty-three Tier II recipients range from Toledo, Ohio ($1,264,500 ) and Bridgeport, Connecticut ($1,967,000) to Philadelphia ($18,139,000) and Dallas/Ft. Worth ($20,321,500). A listing of all 2008 recipients is available from the Department of Homeland Security.

Most Tier I jurisdictions did not see much change in funding from 2006-2007 to 2008. Tier II cities have tended to receive reduced grants as more areas have been added. For example in FY2006 Toledo received $3,850,000. In 2006 Louisville, Kentucky received $8,520,000, this year it will receive $1,421,500. Some of the difference has been made up with funding from other grant programs. But there is a clear trend to distribute UASI funds in a less-concentrated fashion.

The Tier I recipients often complain that they need even more funding. In 2007 Senate testimony New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "“Time and time again, our calls for fully risk-based homeland security funding have been ignored,” the mayor said. “Instead, we have seen large sums of homeland security money spread across the country like peanut butter. More than $3 billion has been distributed in this irrational way so far.”

Risk is an outcome of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. Tier I areas receive a much greater proportion of UASI grants because their population density and economic importance would multiply the consequence of any successful attack. But as sustained efforts to reduce the vulnerability of these areas are effective, threats may shift to more vulnerable areas.

In August 1998 the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania were bombed. These targets were chosen after the first World Trade Center bombing (1993) was not entirely successful and reflected a combination of local vulnerability and local terrorist capability. A bombing of three state capitols - Sacramento, Austin, and Richmond - might achieve terrorist objectives as well as an attack on any Tier I city... and be easier too.

UASI funds give priority to regional, inter-agency, multi-disciplinary planning, organization, training, and exercising focused on terrorist threats. There is also a particular concern with Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Drug-related Violence Shakes Mexico

Mexican troops at a controlled burn of 23 tons of cocaine in Manzanillo (November 2007) Photograph by Alfredo Estrella/AFP

Since his 2006 inauguration Mexican President Felipe Calderon has increased pressure on his nation's drug lords. The cartels have pushed back hard.

According to Mexican reports released this week there were 443 drug-related murders in June and nearly 4700 since President Calderon assumed office. Murder victims have included the federal police chief and, in the first half of 2008 alone, over 400 other police. As violence escalates it has increasingly swept up ordinary citizens not involved in law enforcement or the drug trade (See Houston Chronicle July 19 report).

In a July 12 interview with the Financial Times, the Mexican intelligence chief explained that the drug cartels are "trying to take over the power of the state." A report by the Mexican Attorney General's office found that at least 80 municipal governments are already under the control of the drug cartels.

According to the Congressional Research Service over 90 percent of the US cocaine supply transits Mexico. Roughly 35 million Americans have used cocaine in their lifetime. Regular US users are estimated at 2.4 million (US Department of Justice figures). The 2006 US street price ranged from $9000 to $52,000 per kilogram. Unofficial 2008 estimates suggest an average price of about $20,000 per kilogram. Crack cocaine, a popular derivative, is priced from $5 to $100 per "rock". The total value of the US market for the cocaine trade exceeds $70 billion per year.

On June 30 President Bush signed Congressional legislation providing $465 million for the so-called Merida Initiative to assist Mexico in combating drug trafficking. According to a US State Department statement, "Daily developments on the ground in Mexico and Central America demonstrate the urgent need for action. The criminal organizations, under great pressure by law enforcement agencies, are behaving in increasingly violent ways. Our partners in the region are confronting transnational gangs and criminal organizations at great personal and financial costs. It is in the national security interest of the United States to support our partners’ fight against this scourge, prevent further violence from spilling over our border, and make our streets safe once again from drug and gang-related crime. They are doing their part – we must do ours."

The same Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) fighting against the Mexican government are major drug retailers in the United States. In April 2008 the US National Drug Intelligence Center reported, "Mexican DTOs are the most pervasive threat to the United States. They are active in every region of the country and dominate the illicit drug trade in every area except the Northeast. Mexican DTOs are expanding their operations in the Northeast and have developed cooperative relationships with DTOS in that area in order to gain a larger share of the northeastern drug market." More details are available from the NDIC.

The increase in violence is claimed by some as indicating the desperate state of the Mexican drug cartels. But others argue a government victory is far from inevitable. "They are accelerating the violence. We've never had this kind of conflict in the country," said Samuel Gonzalez, the head of Mexico's anti-organized crime unit in the late 1990s and now a professor at Mexico's ITAM university.

"The cartels have an infinite capacity to recruit hitmen. The violence will keep rising with one extra factor: the state is losing force all the time as it spends money on the army, while the others are getting income from drugs," he said. (More from Reuters).

(The New York Times maintains a helpful collection of news reports and external resources on Mexican drug trafficking.)

Tomatoes and Peppers Suspected

Salsa is often made with tomatoes, cilantro, peppers, chilies, and garlic.

Since April 23 an outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning has sickened over 1000 people in the United States. Two-hundred ten have been hospitalized. One has died of causes aggravated by the Salmonella infection.

An aggressive effort by private, local, state and federal health and food safety officials to trace the origin and cause of the outbreak has been unsuccessful.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Salmonella is a group of bacteria that can cause diarrheal illness in humans. They are microscopic living creatures that pass from the feces of people or animals to other people or other animals." The bacteria often enters the food system through irrigation or run-off of infected water.

Profiles developed of those sickened by the Saintpaul strain of Salmonella since April seem to suggest fresh tomatoes, cerrano peppers, and/or cilantro could be the carriers. But testing of commercially available products has found no infection.

In late June Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's Associate Director for Foods, explained, "“we may not ultimately know the farm where these came from... That’s not that unusual with tomato outbreaks,” he said. “It’s not that infrequent for us to be unable to actually trace back specifically to the source.”

Those infected with the Saintpaul strain have been identified in 42 states and the District of Columbia. Concentrations in New Mexico, Texas, and Illinois constitute roughly 60 percent of the total.

More information, including regular updating, is available from the CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/saintpaul/

The industrialization of the food system has centralized both production and processing. Very large product volumes distributed over wide geographic areas result in any food safety problem being quickly transferred to large numbers of consumers.

The current Salmonella mystery demonstrates the potent threat presented by a compromised food safety system. Unless the source can be definitively identified, the cause cannot be known, and prevention or mitigation is frustrated. In 1984 ten salad bars in The Dalles, Oregon were contaminated with Salmonella by followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Seven hundred fifty were sickened and 45 were hospitalized in an attempt to influence election results. (Additional information is available from wbur.org)

In April 2008 the Federal Bureau of Investigation hosted the Third Annual Symposium on Agroterrorism which included a presentation on Salmonella water supply contamination and several other risks to the food system.

The US food system is risk amplifying rather than risk resilient. Whatever the risk - natural, accidental, or intentional - the current system is highly vulnerable.

POSTSCRIPT - On July 21 the FDA reported a confirmed finding of salmonella stpaul on jalepeno peppers. More is available from CNN.

Federal Disaster Role Grows

Flames near Big Sur, California (June 2008)

Photo by Kurt Rogers, San Francisco Chronicle

On June 28 President Bush, responding to a request from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared an emergency for seven California counties fighting wildfires. The Presidential Declaration authorized federal assistance under the Stafford Act. The Emergency Declaration succeeds a June 22 federal Fire Management Assistance Declaration for two counties in California.

This was the fifth Emergency Declaration issued by the President in 2008. According to the Department of Homeland Security the purpose of the Emergency Declaration is, "to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe."

Thirty-seven Major Disaster declarations have been issued since January. (A listing of Presidential Declarations is available from FEMA.) As defined by the Stafford Act an Emergency Declaration differs from a Disaster Declaration primarily in terms of the anticipated federal expenditure. There is a $5 million cap for an "emergency" while there is no cap for a "disaster." There are also expeditious ways to exceed the cap on federal funding of emergencies. Federal funding usually requires a local funding match of 25 percent. (More information on the difference between a disaster and emergency is available from SEMP.)

The number of Presidential Disaster Declarations is increasing over time. (The total number of Disaster Declarations per year is also available from FEMA.) Between 2002 and 2007 the average number of Disaster Declarations per year was 57.4. For the prior five-year period the average was 50.6. For the period 1993-1998 there was an average of 42 Disaster Declarations per year. It is difficult to track federal expenditures for disaster response, but a recent Congressional Research Service study found that emergency supplemental funding for disasters had increased from roughly $6 billion in 1998 to over $467 billion in 2008.

Several factors have influenced the increased federal role, including the escalating impact and cost of disasters, intensive national media coverage, and the political vulnerability of appearing to be less than fully responsive to local disasters. Some express concern that federal responsiveness is discouraging more aggressive local and state action that could reduce vulnerability to disasters. (See Feds and Fire from the Los Angeles Times)