Findings: Qualitative Data: Context of Terrorism

Context matters. Experience matters. It matters to a community if their water has been contaminated before by bacteria and now there’s a chemical in it. It matters to a community if their water contamination is coming on the heels of a major drought. It matters to a community if the recent news with the EPA is of scandal and corporate compromising.

The present dominant context is undeniably the fear of terrorism, and bioterrorism in particular when it comes to water supplies. Last year, the water supply system management plans, including the emergency preparedness plan, which each water district is required by law to create and update every five years, were made confidential. The governor and legislature were concerned about the possibility of terrorists having access to maps of water supplies for the state. It is in this context that the focus groups discussed water contamination events.

Context always matters, though. When discussing their experience with the Pascoag residents, they discussed their previous experiences with state officials and that they felt marginalized because they live in a small, low-income, geographically separate section of the state. Context is more than just terrorism, but that is the most relevant area of discussion for the present.

In the first group, terrorism was mentioned immediately as a major threat to drinking water in the state, in a current context. “Right now, it’s terrorism.” Participants recognized that they hadn’t always been worried about terrorism, but that they had to be right now. However, this wasn’t a fully developed concern, since the first contaminants mentioned were oil and petroleum products, generic runoff, and agricultural pesticides and fertilizers, rather than the biological agents of concern employed by terrorists. Terrorism seemed to be present as a real concern, but not something about which a great deal was known.

In the second group, terrorism was mentioned much later in the discussion, in a completely different way. A participant said that “I think that since. . .September 11. . . municipal water supplies are doing their due diligence much more than they were previously. . .I think it’s more tested, more overseen, more chemists looking into it.” Because of concerns about terrorism, officials are more vigilant, so water is actually safer than previously. The Department of Homeland Security was also mentioned, in terms of a potentially responsible party for dealing with the contamination, and as a possible information source.

Overall, terrorism and the manifestations of dealing with it were mentioned as a new concern, a recent change to be dealt with. These context-driven issues cannot always be planned for in advance, but they are clearly on the minds of communities as they face a contamination and its aftermath. Once a concern like bioterrorism is on the table, because of whatever societal or contextual factors putting it there, it can be used as a means for education and dialogue. For example, HEALTH recently produced a distributed a brochure about bioterrorism in English and in Spanish. Though the brochure did not specifically address water contamination concerns, it seems that interest in such issues is present.

“Right now, [the main threat is] terrorism.”

“I think that since... September 11... municipal water supplies are doing their due diligence much more than they were previously. . .I think it’s more tested, more overseen, more chemists looking into it.”