Anniston Star
January 29, 2003

Lack of federal money could delay protective equipment

By Jason Landers
Star Staff Writer
01-29-2003

Federal budget shortfalls could stall efforts to equip local residents for a disaster involving the Army's chemical weapons stockpile.

The Calhoun County Commission is set to finalize a contract at its Feb. 13 meeting to provide protective hoods, home sheltering kits, and indoor air re-circulation filters to residents.

That vote will be postponed, county officials warn, if $5 million in promised federal money doesn't arrive first.

"We've done our job," said Mike Burney, director of the county's Emergency Management Agency, or EMA. "We expect them (the federal government) to do theirs."

Without the money, county officials say, they cannot finalize an agreement with Centech Group, Inc., the Virginia-based firm that submitted the successful bid for the emergency items.

Even after that contract is finalized, months will elapse before the equipment is distributed.

"The holdup is with the Army," said Scott Adcock, a spokesman for the state Emergency Management Agency. "All we need is the funding " Adcock said the state agency is ready to transfer the money to the county as soon as it arrives.

For the moment, the money is foundering in bureaucratic limbo - it is being held at the Secretary of Defense's office. From there, it must be sent to the Department of the Army, then go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will release it to the state EMA, which in turn will distribute it to the county.

Sources blame the delay on budget constraints faced by the Army program that prepares communities surrounding the nation's eight chemical weapons stockpiles for disaster. They say the Army budgeted more money for those communities for 2003 than Congress appropriated.

A Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday that the funding promised to Calhoun County will arrive, though he couldn't offer a timetable.

"We are doing what we can to move this process along," the spokesman said, adding that the funding has a high priority.