Manhole security and U.S. critical infrastructure

steam is also distributed through underground pipes); water supply (most of the water distribution system, water storage, and some treatment facilities and raw water transport lines are below ground); wastewater and storm water (disposal of wastewater and storm water runoff is done largely through underground pipes and tunnels); transportation (much rail transportation in urban areas, including commuter, long distance, and cargo traffic, is underground); underground courses (in cities, such course provide unmonitored and uncontrolled access to buildings and facilities).

This complex infrastructure must be routinely and continuously maintained, repaired, upgraded, and monitored. Manholes provide access to underground infrastructure, and since this infrastructure is vast and sprawling, there are many manholes (the company calculates that there are some twenty-two million manholes in the United States). Manhole covers are typically round to prevent them from falling inside the hole, are made primarily from iron, and typically weigh around 100 pounds. Manhole ownership varies from location to location, and since different manholes are owned by different companies or entities, most provide access to only one or two utilities. In some cities, though, a large number of manholes provide access to several elements of the infrastructures. Manhole covers rely on their weight to stay put under foot and motor traffic, and also to thwart unauthorized access by vandals. There are also a number of way to secure manholes by controlling access to the cover: Locking the cover itself, detecting intruders, or physically sealing or hardening of the manhole.

Unprotected manholes offer terrorists a relatively easy way to inflict damage which ranges from the merely disruptive to the seriously debilitating. A terrorist attack-through-manholes could be aimed to achieve one or more of the following: Corruption of communications capabilities (interfering, jamming, or corrupting signals into telecommunications systems); complete disruption of critical utility service (severing electric power, water, gas, or telecommunications lines; destroying key regulatory and control systems); contamination of water or air (introducing a toxic biological or chemical agents into drinking water; release of chemical or biological agents in a mass transit system); theft and misappropriation (tapping information flows; siphoning energy; gaining surreptitious control over information systems); divert attention from another larger attack; disrupt critical utility service, resulting in hampering first response and emergency and rescue missions aimed to assist with another attack; or use conduits to inject and transport gas or chemical vapors or liquids into buildings to force an evacuation, introduce poison, or as a means