TSA continues airport investments

Coinciding with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Transportation Security Administration has filtered millions of fiscal 2009 funds to airport surveillance and cargo screening throughout the last month.

On Friday, TSA announced two awards for enhanced airport surveillance at Dallas/Fort Worth and San Francisco international airports. DFW will receive $6 million and SFO will receive $5 million to enhance their closed circuit television systems already in place with new cameras and increased storage capacity on existing cameras. In strangely identical quotes included with separate TSA announcements, the federal security directors for the two airports called the enhanced systems "a tremendous asset to security efforts," which will "strengthen security, allow for more efficient personnel deployment and assist with the resolution of suspicious items."

Also Friday, TSA announced two awards for new checked baggage screening systems at Wichita Mid-Continent and John Wayne airports. ICT in Wichita, Ks. will receive $6.9 million and Orange County, Calif.'s SNA will receive $8.8 million for the construction of inline baggage handling systems to quickly detect possible explosives. At ICT, the $160 million effort is scheduled to be completed in mid-2013 and will replace the current facility that is nearly 60 years old. SNA's system will be functioning at its new Terminal C in late 2011.

These awards come about a week after TSA announced a grant of about $4 million for construction of a similar system at Panama City-Bay County International Airport in Florida, and two weeks after TSA announced that $35.4 million in recovery funds would be used for airport surveillance and cargo screening technologies in other areas of the country.

Perhaps influencing this flurry of spending is an Interim Final Rule announced by TSA on September 15 to fulfill the air cargo security requirements of the 2007 9/11 Act. The law mandates screening of 50 percent of cargo transported on passenger aircraft by February 2009 and 100 percent by August 2010.