Mr. KNOWLES. To some extent. Trying to be proactive with what was going on, whether it was in Florida or Arizona. We certainly did not want it to happen in our State and going back to this idea of prevention and intelligence gathering, we're asking those pilots to, when some suspicious activity-if something is not quite correct, if you have a question about somebody's motive for learning to fly a crop duster, let us know and we'll help you with that, but yes, since that occurred, crop dusting is now on our scope and it's in our data bank. Mr. MORAN. The Law Enforcement Center at Yoder, has that course work-this may be a question for the Undersheriff as well. As the course work changed in regard to what law enforcement officers are taught, trained? Mr. KNOWLES. Being under oath, the other director, as you know, he's the former director of the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center in Yoder here. If I could defer to our director and see if he might have a thought in that direction. Would that be permissible, Mr. Chairman? Mr. HORN. Certainly. Mr. KNOWLES. And I would introduce the director of the KBI, Larry Welch, who is the former director of the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center in Yoder, Kansas. Mr. WELCH. Thank you very much. I did know that Deputy Director Knowles was going to figure out a way to get me up here. Congressman Moran, the answer to your question is while the basic certification course at the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center at Yoder has not changed significantly because of the events or the aftermath of September 11th, they have reached out and added courses and training in what we would call in-service training seminars throughout the State of Kansas. But as far as basic training for certification of Kansas law enforcement officers, I must answer the question that they haven't really significantly changed the core curriculum but considerable training has been done by the Academy, by seminars and schools throughout the State and indeed by others. Mr. MORAN. I appreciate your answer and I also appreciate the efforts of the KBI not only in the area of terrorism but just the full plate that you have in our State to try and combat a number of law enforcement and therefore, problems for our citizens. Mr. WELCH. Congressman, if I might interrupt and embellish just a bit on the question that you asked of the deputy director regarding why specifically we were so involved in the INS matters, it's actually primarily a matter in that particular situation of manpower on the part of Immigration. They don't have enough agents-this office in Kansas City covers half of Missouri and all the State of Kansas. They were woefully undermanned after September 11th and it started out primarily simply as a matter to provide manpower for them to assist in arrests on visa violations and it kind of extended from there. Mr. MORAN. I appreciate that answer and I asked the question because the INS struggles greatly in performing its duties, not only in our State, but nationwide and it's an issue that we care lot about in Kansas about their ability to enforce the law and I was interested in how the KBI became engaged with the INS. Let me ask the undersheriff in Ford County or southwest Kansas, do our cattle feeders do anything different today than they were prior to September 11th that related perhaps to this issue of intelligence? Mr. LANE. I think so. I think we've seen-at least in our community, I can speak for a number of biosecurity measures put in place. I think that there are some cost prohibitive things that have not been done and also, considering the vast expanse of a typical 50,000 head feedyard over three or 400 acres of land is difficult to put under surveillance so I think that there is a good attempt at implementing biosecurity measures, I think in Mr. Teagarden's recommendation early on, that a lot of them started addressing those issues and we have seen some success in our area. That's emphasizing cleanliness in equipment, scrutinizing shipping papers so that an infected animal may not come in from another State or another country. Mr. MORAN. Mr. Teagarden-my final question, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Teagarden, would you walk you through the scenario of the belief that if there's foot and mouth disease in feedyards in Kansas, what should happen and who plays what role in that response? Mr. TEAGARDEN. You want to take a deep seat first? If a feedlot operator or a cowboy out in the feedlot found some unusual disease symptom that they weren't familiar with, they would notify probably their own veterinarian within that feedyard. If that veterinarian thought there was something that looked like a foreign animal disease, they would call our department or USDA and we would send out a trained foreign animal disease diagnostician. All of our veterinarians on our staff and State have been to a special school at Plum Island for foreign animal disease. Mr. MORAN. Is that vet, is he placed somewhere close to southwest Kansas or somebody that comes from Topeka? Mr. TEAGARDEN. No. Stationed from Dodge City. From Kingman to Dodge City is about 22 to 3 hours for one of our vets that would cover Dodge City so we would go out, collect samples, ship them as quick as we could get them to Plum Island. If our vet that was out there thought it was highly likely, we would activate our emergency plan to at least a Level III at that time. In other words, get people together, start the system. We have a media team that would be ready to send out notices to the media about what the situation was, where it was at, so on and so forth. We would go into action. We have been planning for an outbreak of foreign animal disease for roughly 4 years now and we have-it's not a complete plan and never will be, but we've got it down to where we kind of know the first indication, true indication that we have a foreign animal disease, we're going to go into action and we believe in Kansas that the only way to combat an outbreak is to hit it with all we've got. We're going to declare war on a disease, such as foot and mouth, because that's the only way we'll get ahead is hit it hard and hope we can stop it. Mr. MORAN. You indicated the sample would be sent to Plum Island. Is that the efficient way of doing it? Mr. TEAGARDEN. That's the only place we can get a true definitive diagnosis at the time and that's why we need more laboratory capabilities. Mr. MORAN. Mr. Jaax. Mr. JAAX. I would like to weigh in on that one also. I think that in my testimony I talked about foreign diagnostics and, obviously, the faster you find out that you have a problem, the more confident you can be in your response and those responses can be done in a very straightforward way. The situation with foot and mouth, as I understand it with Plum Island, is that those reagents that are necessary to make that diagnosis really don't require the kind of containment that's available at Plum Island, but it's a situation where they don't want a false/positive made and have the responsibility for that in the field. I think under pre-September 11th circumstances perhaps that was completely understandable, but 36, 48 hours in a foot and mouth outbreak is a lot of time and I don't think that we can afford the luxury of finding out days after diagnosis could be made that we have foot and mouth disease here so I'm very strongly in support of having those forward diagnostics so that we can find out very quickly that we have an outbreak and again, with a very highly contagious virus like foot and mouth disease, it can spread explosively so it's very important to get your arms around it as fast as you can. Mr. MORAN. Does that capability currently exist in Kansas to do the test? Mr. JAAX. If we had the reagents we could do it. Mr. HORN. I just have a couple of questions here. Throughout some of your testimony you talked about the West Nile. Can you define that for me, Mr. Jaax? Mr. JAAX. West Nile virus is a viral disease that originated in sub-Saharan Africa. It is co-anodic, which means it affects both animals and man. I think it's a great example of those crossover diseases that we would be concerned about that would go beyond just human disease or just animal diseases. We have vectors in this part of the country, all across the country and those vectors are, in this case, would be mosquitoes that could transfer and serve as reservoirs for the disease. You know, not each foreign animal disease or each bioterrorism event would have to be an outbreak event. It could be a much more insidious disease, like this one, and there are clearly other diseases out there that would serve as a useful model, but West Nile has become endemic in the United States. It was not found here before, I believe, the last 22 years. One of the things that's interesting about West Nile, in my view, is the current lack of meaningful communication between the veterinary public health community and the traditional public health community. This disease was recognized by a veterinarian pathologist in New York sometime before the official diagnosis was made and with a co-anodic agent they may show up in animal populations prior to their manifestation in human populations, so it's important that we build that linkage of our public health infrastructure, which I think is a very positive step associated with the September 11th event as far as our national public health is concerned. Mr. HORN. How does that get transmitted from Africa to New York City and is it a food? Mr. JAAX. No. Well, they don't know how West Nile got here and there's all kinds of speculation you could make regarding it. May very well have come with someone who was inflicted, with some person because what happens with the disease is that a mosquito would bite an infected animal or person and then would then again transmit that to another person or to an animal. Mr. HORN. Is that what is going on in Louisiana? Mr. JAAX. Absolutely. Yes, sir. Mr. HORN. Now, Texas presumably is No. 1 in cattle. Has anything happened as a result of all this? Mr. JAAX. With West Nile? Mr. HORN. Yes, or others like that. Mr. JAAX. Well, there are clearly diseases that would have the same sort of mechanism but those are, luckily, the most severe ones we don't have in this country that would affect cattle. To my knowledge, West Nile is not a serious pathogen in food animals. It is a serious horse pathogen and people who have horses are right to be concerned about that and it is a human pathogen but again, it's not a significantly serious disease unless you are one of the unfortunate people who happens to get it. Mr. HORN. Or your horses. Mr. JAAX. Absolutely. Mr. HORN. I'm curious about Texas now. Everybody says they have the most cattle. Then there's an argument here on who is two and three. Mr. JAAX. We're right in there somewhere. Mr. HORN. Well, is Nebraska No. 2 and then Kansas three or is it Kansas two and Nebraska three? It's like the football game. We've got the coverage now. Mr. JAAX. I would defer to Mr. Teagarden on that. Mr. HORN. Well, I would like to get that figured out just for the Guinness records. Mr. MORAN. I'm probably the one who could answer, Mr. Chairman. I'm not under oath. Mr. HORN. And you will say? Mr. MORAN. Kansas. Mr. HORN. I want to just, Larry, before you leave, just if you don't mind, take the oath. [Witness sworn.] Mr. HORN. Any other questions? Well, it's a wonderful panel we have had here who have a lot of scientific knowledge and that's a good thought. Thank you very much for coming. We have one last panel and that is Otto Maynard, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp.; Kevin Stafford, Special Agent in charge of the Kansas City Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Patricia Dalton, Strategic Issues, U.S. Office, and Richard Hainje, Director, Region 7. Let's start here with Mr. Otto Maynard, president and chief executive officer of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp. Mr. MAYNARD. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Mr. HORN. When we call on you, your whole written presentation goes in the record at this point and we would like you to summarize it. STATEMENT OF OTTO MAYNARD, PRESIDENT, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, WOLF CREEK NUCLEAR OPERATING CORP. Mr. MAYNARD. Thank you very much. My name is Otto Maynard, President and Chief Executive Officer of Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp. We operate the Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Station near Burlington in Coffey County for three of our owners, which is KG&E, a Westar Energy Co., Kansas City Power and Light, a Great Plains Energy Co., and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative. I'll start out by pointing out that I am not a government agency. I know that for sure because I pay taxes and fees rather than receiving taxes and fees, but to be successful, I have to interact and coordinate with a number of local, State and Federal agencies. Prior to September 11, 2001, all the nuclear power plants had professional security forces in place. At Wolf Creek we had at that time, still have a very highly trained, well armed security force. Many of the security officers are ex-military, ex-law enforcement and we exercise them in a number of different scenarios to provide the protection for our plant against any type of attack that might be conceived. The other thing that we had prior to September 11th was an emergency plan. We are required to have an emergency plan. That plan provides for the overall communication, coordination and response to any type of event or issue affecting Wolf Creek that could have some potential implication on the health and safety of the public. That was all in place prior to September 11th. After September 11th, we further enhanced the security by adding additional security officers, additional patrols and many other things that were put in place to provide heightened awareness and heightened security force. We got excellent cooperation from the local sheriff, Kansas Highway Patrol, Kansas National Guard and since September 11th we have also had excellent cooperation with the U.S. military. A number of exercises, round table discussions, scenarios have been played out so that we very clearly understand what other roles and responsibilities are, what the roles and responsibilities of other agencies and what the response capabilities are and exactly how we would utilize each other's resources in the event there was something in the way of a terrorist attack potentially impacting Wolf Creek. I would also like to acknowledge that after September 11th we got excellent cooperation from a number of Federal agencies. Of course, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. You know, Region IV of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the lead Federal agency in issues affecting Wolf Creek and they provided us with excellent communication throughout this last year, provided us information that we needed to be aware of and in making sure that we were doing the things that were prudent in protecting the health and safety of the public. Also had excellent cooperation from a number of other agencies; KBI, the FBI, the FAA, a number of agencies, some of which we had not coordinated or worked with that much before. One of the reasons I believe it was easy for us to establish some relationships, to get this level of cooperation is because of the emergency plan that we had in place for issues potentially affecting Wolf Creek. That plan provides, as I said before, for coordination |