After months of wavering under intense political pressure, federal officials have approved the release of millions of dollars that will pay for protective respiratory hoods for residents near the Anniston Army Depot’s stockpile of chemical weapons.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Monday that $7 million to pay for the hoods and top-level protective suits for emergency responders will soon be on its way to Alabama. These funds have been the source of, at times, bitter feuding between the federal agency and Calhoun County officials and their heavyweight supporters in Montgomery and Washington, D.C.
Coming as it did in an election season, the announcement left Alabama’s two candidates for governor jockeying for credit for obtaining the funds. Aides for both incumbent Don Siegelman and his challenger, U.S. Rep. Bob Riley, touted their man’s strategy as the one that led FEMA to drop its objections to issuing the equipment.
An agency official, however, said the decision was based on the FEMA’s approval of plans submitted by state officials on how to train users on the equipment. The plans for the hoods were developed by Jacksonville State University, working under a contract with the Calhoun County, while the plans for the suits were submitted by the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.
“The plans are adequate to move forward with providing hoods to the general populace, which is the first time for a program of this kind,” said Ken Burris, regional director for FEMA.
Concerns about training and the maintenance of the protective hoods, which function like gas masks but are easier to use, initially led FEMA to deny the request. The agency also had doubts that local emergency responders would need what’s known as “level A” protective in the event of a chemical weapons accident at the stockpile or the incinerator. These suits, which have a self-contained breathing apparatus, are cumbersome and many questioned how they fit into a response plan.
“The question always was: ‘What’s the plan going to be?’ ” Burris said.
At this stage, with the paperwork yet to become public, the details of how the county will use the equipment remain unclear. What is certain is that it will take several months for the first of the 36,000 residents who live in the pink zones — the areas closest to the weapons — to get their hoods. Once the money arrives, the hoods and suits, which will be packaged with two other items, will be put out to bid.
There is no indication that these items will be in place by the time the Army’s incinerator begins to burn rockets loaded with nerve agent later this year.
When it arrives, the $7 million will be the last to trickle in of $40.5 million the Pentagon awarded last November to an emergency preparedness program that local officials insisted was underfunded. Delays in the transfer of the funding and FEMA’s concerns about some of the items to be purchased ensured that an already strained relationship between the federal and local government on this issue only got worse.
Even with the announcement on the hoods and suits, county officials and their political allies emphasized additional issues to be addressed within the incinerator and emergency preparedness programs, suggesting that the release of the funds will be anything but the end of the controversy surrounding Anniston’s stores of chemical weapons.
A statement from the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency offered the fullest depiction of the road ahead on this issue. It outlined a slew of additional preparedness questions the agency says needs to be answered before the program will reach the standard of “maximum protection” — the lofty language used by Congress to set the standard for the preparedness program protecting communities near the chemical stockpiles.
Will 37 county schools receive equipment that would make them airtight in the event of an accident as the county has asked? Will the Army heed the county’s request and accept the duty of alerting the residents in the pink zones in the event of an accident? How will updated toxicity data on the agent stored at the depot affect planning? And how will the special needs population, the disabled and the elderly, be provided for?
Of FEMA’s announcement, county EMA director Mike Burney said, “While this is encouraging news, we must be clear that it does not solve all our problems.”
“If we had been funded for these items when they were promised to Calhoun County … nine months ago, we would be far ahead of where we are now,” he said. “We will move quickly as possible with what resources are available, but the community needs to understand this is not ‘maximum protection’ as dictated by law, and it is not sufficient to protect the community.”
In a written release, Siegelman, who had filed a lawsuit against the Army and FEMA over shortcomings in the preparedness program, echoed many of the county’s worries and reiterated his concerns about the Army’s controversial plans to burn gelled rockets in the incinerator.
“We will continue to fight to prevent the use of the ‘chop and drop’ method unless it is proven to be a safe way to dispose of the weapons,” he said.
An aide to Riley said that the gubernatorial-hopeful, who was involved in high-level meetings with FEMA officials on the matter, would also continue to keep an eye on the issue.
Both camps insisted that their actions led to the agency’s decision to release the funds.
Siegelman legal advisor Ted Hosp said it was triggered by days of negotiations with Justice Department lawyers and the state’s submittal of plans for the use of the equipment to FEMA.
Riley’s press secretary, Pepper Bryars, criticized Siegelman’s lawsuit, saying that if the case had gone to trial the controversy would have been extended.
“It is a definite success for Congressman Riley’s tactics,” he said.
