How will metro areas cope with a rising tide of homeland defense issues? Especially on biodefense issues, the Washington, D.C. region is fast becoming America’s beta-region — if only because it’s clearly a symbolic, high visibility target, or as one official puts it — “a bull’s eye.”
Among several federal bioterror initiatives, there’s a new $420 million program to transform four urban areas — Washington leading the pack, Albuquerque second and two yet to be identified — into state-of-the-art showcases of potential preparedness and coordination. (See Washington Post article of July 14- “A First Step on U.S. Biodefense”.)
Washington’s a step ahead with hazmat capacity it’s developed, including new protective gear, pathogen testing equipment and a mobile laboratory, since last September. But now the challenge is to “stitch together,” as officials put it, the center city’s biodefense efforts with the area’s 19 other jurisdictions — not just their municipal or county governments but police and fire forces, public health structures, privately owned hospitals, physicians and health care providers.
Is it indeed possible to create a “seamless whole” of regional capacity, on bioterrorism threats or any other homeland security issue? No one can say. But the bones of an effective communications system are also being developed in the Washington area (See Peirce column of April 28.)
Indeed, for once, the normally quarrelsome and deeply divided Washington area is becoming what a National Capital ought to be — a model of how to approach a thorny, shared national issue.
But that’s just a start. How effectively will the federal government urge, goad, persuade other regions to emulate the Washington model, or develop their own workable alternatives? (See the the full report on federal-local ties in homeland security, including a review of model regional efforts, prepared by William Dodge and issued by the Alliance for Regional Stewardship.)