U.S. Senator James Lankford, along with U.S. Senators Gary Peters of Michigan, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, and Tom Carper of Delaware have introduced a bill to extend the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program which expires near the end of July.
The program was created in the wake of the September 11th terror attacks by al-Qaeda. It regulates facilities holding high-risk chemicals to insure they have security measures in place. If the program expires, there will be no requirement for those anti-terrorism measures.
“The types of chemicals protected by the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program are the same chemicals used in the OKC domestic terrorist bombing in 1995,” said Lankford. “We have to make sure these dangerous chemicals don’t fall into the wrong hands or get exploited by terrorists. We must maintain these critical protections for our national security, and I am glad to join Senator Peters to once again reauthorize this important program.”
Lankford, Peters, and Carper have led previous efforts to keep the CFATS program renewed, most recently in 2020.
