Partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C. has left the U.S. national power grid and communications networks vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which could leave millions of Americans without power for years, experts warned Congress on Wednesday.
"Political gridlock in Washington is preventing the federal government from implementing any of the several cost-effective plans to protect the national grid," Peter Pry, executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, told the subcommittees on national security and the interior, reported WND.
EMPs are short bursts of electromagnetic energy that can come from solar flares emitted from the sun, but also from high-altitude nuclear explosions.
"The problem is not the technology," Pry previously told Watchdog. "We know how to protect against it. It's not the money, it doesn't cost that much. The problem is the politics. It always seems to be the politics that gets in the way."
He added: "If you do a smart plan - the Congressional EMP Commission estimated that you could protect the whole country for about $2 billion. That's what we give away in foreign aid to Pakistan every year."
An internal Department of Homeland Security report from 2012 warned that a strong EMP could leave "130 million people without power for years" and destroy or damage more than 300 electrical grid transformers, which are difficult to replace, reported the Washington Free Beacon.
Also testifying on Wednesday was Michael Carusa, the director of government and specialty business development for ETS-Lindgren, a company that provides systems and components to monitor electric energy.
"It is my sincere belief we as a nation will someday in the not-too-distant future face an EMP attack," Carusa said, adding that systems for managing finances, drinking water, transportation, food distribution and health care could be affected, according to WND.
Congress should mandate that new buildings be equipped with EMP protection features, while retrofitting old ones, Carusa said.
Pry told Congress that the North American Electricity Reliability Corp. (NERC), a utility-lobbying group, has specifically contributed to the political gridlock by resisting recommendations to install EMP- blocking devices, Faraday cages and surge protectors, reported WND.
"Washington remains gridlocked between lobbying by NERC and the wealthy electric power industry, and the recommendations of the congressional EMP Commission and other independent scientific and strategic experts on the other hand," Pry said.
"The states should not wait for Washington to act, but should act now to protect themselves," he added.
It appears as if some progress was made on Thursday, though. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted 5-0 to create a new reliability standard that will protect from geomagnetic disturbances like EMPs, reported the Washington Examiner. Special attention will be given to high- voltage transformers which are especially vulnerable.
FERC said in a statement that Thursday's vote will adopt a "standard that sets requirements for transmission planners and owners to assess the vulnerability of their systems to a 'benchmark GMD event,' which [the North American Electric Reliability Corporation] described as a 'one-in-100-year' event. If an entity does not meet certain performance requirements based on the assessments, it must develop a plan to achieve the requirements."
