LAUREL - Amid terrorism fears, the Environmental Protection Agency handed out the first grants yesterday in a $53 million program to help drinking water facilities draft new security plans.

But even as the first ceremonial check was delivered - to a suburban Washington utility that serves more than 40 federal facilities as well as a large swath of Maryland - officials were fretting over where they would find the money to implement those anti-terror strategies.

About 400 drinking water plants around the country will receive the study grants, which are to assess the vulnerability of the facilities to terrorist attacks and formulate plans to guard against the blocking or poisoning of water supplies going to suburban homes, street hydrants and government facilities.

"Water supplies are vulnerable in a lot of different places," EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said after delivering the first check at Rocky Gorge Reservoir, which supplies water for Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

"The most important thing we want to do is make sure that every place that we can anticipate - from the actual reservoir to the tap - is being anticipated."

The first round of checks went to six utilities around the country, including the $115,000 grant to the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, the only grant to the capital area.

Officials at the commission estimate that it will cost roughly $100 million to implement a new security plan for the regional water supply.

The facility in Laurel employs its own security force, with armed officers patrolling on boats, horseback and in off-road vehicles.

Threats range from the release of biological and chemical agents resistant to the chlorine used to protect the water supply to computer tinkering that could overdose the water supply with the chemicals used to treat it.

At the reservoir, Montgomery County Republican Rep. Constance A. Morella played down the threat to tap water and expressed overall confidence in the region's ability to protect the water supply.

"People can be relieved of any anxiety," Morella said. "Their water continues to be safe."

Morella, engaged in a tight re-election fight, was alongside Whitman, one of several recent events in which she has appeared with Bush administration officials.

The water security announcement dovetailed nicely with the White House message, coming a day after President Bush announced plans to create a new homeland security department.

The theme continues next week when Bush will talk about how the department might enhance the safety of the nation's water supply as he visits a water treatment facility in Kansas City, Mo.