Officials to seek incineration aid

This story was published Fri, Jul 27, 2001

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Oregon bureau

PORTLAND - Umatilla and Morrow counties aren't the only places that think the federal government should pay them for the impact of building massive incinerators to burn chemical weapons.

On the final day of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) National Conference, county commissioners and city officials from areas bordering the nation's eight chemical stockpile sites gathered in a small room to compare notes and plan strategies of how to get more financial help from the government.

Wearing his signature white cowboy hat, Casey Beard, Morrow County emergency operations manager, took the reins at the beginning of the meeting and cut directly to the chase - impact aid.

Impact aid is money the communities want from the government to help offset the costs they will incur as a result of the incineration projects. For instance, the cities and counties want help paying for roads, water and sewer projects and school expansions needed to deal with population jumps because of the incinerator workers.

In the past year, a group contracted by the Army has visited each incinerator site, interviewing county commissioners, mayors and planners. The group, the Institute for Defense, has been hired to determine what, if any, financial impacts the projects would have on local communities. The analysis is to be completed by August.

However, when the group showed up in Richmond, Ky., where permits have yet to be issued for an incinerator, they weren't very interested in the case public officials were making, said Fred Brandenburg, who works for the city of Richmond.

"They said they already knew what the impacts were going to be," Brandenburg said. "They spent about an hour with us going over money and didn't take (the paperwork prepared by city officials) with them."

Tooele County, Utah, public officials didn't get a warm, fuzzy feeling from the group, either.

"We felt the questions they asked were all driven to the answer 'no,' " said Kari Sager, of Tooele County Emergency Management. Sager said it was even more difficult to isolate the true impact on the county because it is growing so rapidly.

Also, Tooele already has destroyed 37 percent of its stockpile - more chemical weapons than are stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Beard also is concerned because the Army is responding to the counties' impact aid requests through CSEPP channels. The two issues are separate, he said.

"Impact aid has nothing to do with public safety and emergency preparedness," Beard said. "Disconnecting those two and getting the (impact aid) funding from somewhere else is very important."

No matter what happens, the officials meeting in Portland said they need to remain unified.

"We need to work together as a coalition," said Brandenburg. "They may try to make that coalition fall apart through inequities, but we need to stick together to make sure everyone gets the same piece of pie."

The group believes forming a coalition of public officials from the different states will not only give them stronger footing if a fight occurs, but also help them by sharing information.

A coalition also could help push laws through Congress to address problems at chemical sites, Brandenburg added. Officials in states such as Oregon and Alabama, where incineration is just around the corner, can give vital advice to those in Kentucky, who are just starting the permit review process. In fact, the Kentucky contingent got what may turn out to be a very valuable piece of advice during the meeting:

"Get commitments on the revenue before you sign off on the permits," said Michael Burney, director of Calhoun County Emergency Management in Alabama. "If we would have known then what we know now, we probably wouldn't have signed on for this."

 

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