Yesterday, CISA’s Office of Chemical Security, updated their CFATS Monthly Statistics website to provide information on the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. The statistics reported involve activities for the Chemical Security Inspectors in support of the program during the month of March 2023 and the status of the facilities in the program at the end of the month. The overall number of CSI activities increased slightly over last month. There was a slight decline in the number of covered facilities.
CSI Activities
The table below provides a summary of the data that OCS has been reporting for the last four months concerning the activities conducted by CSI.
Last month we saw an increase in the number of authorization inspections. This is to be expected as we continue to see the large influx of new facilities tiered last summer complete the development and approval process for their site security plans. This number will probably drop off some this month as reflected in the decline in compliance assistance visits. The increase in the number of compliance inspections continues the trend of higher than average numbers we have seen for this month in the last couple of years, reflecting the cyclical nature of these inspections, but it is also influenced by the larger than normal number of facilities receiving site security approvals in the first quarter of last year.
Facility Status
The table below shows the status of facilities covered by the CFATS program at the end of the month.
We saw a second straight month of increases in the number of tiered facilities in the program, reflecting positively on the continued success of CISA’s CFATS outreach program. The continued decline in the number of facilities with authorized site security plans reflects the same trend that I described above with respect to the increase in compliance inspections. It is difficult to explain the higher than average decline in the number of facilities covered by the CFATS program because CISA fails to provide any information about why facilities are leaving the program. I would like to hope that it reflects efforts on the part of the previously covered facilities to reduce their risk of terrorist attack by reducing or eliminating their inventories of chemicals of interest (COI), but it could also be due to business failures.
With the CFATS program up for renewal this year, it might be a good time for one of the three oversight committees to request that GAO look at why facilities leave the CFATS program. Or, proactively, the Office of Chemical Security could produce such a report on their own. That might be particularly appropriate given the recent 15th anniversary of the program.