The federal government wants local and state officials to choose the type of protective respiratory hoods that will be issued to residents near the Anniston Army Depot.
Federal officials want the Anniston City Council and the Calhoun County Commission to vote on the selected hood. And they want the county to tell the public that using duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal windows and doors during a chemical weapons accident would provide a higher level of safety than would wearing the hoods.
These are a few of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's criteria for the distribution of the hoods, a novel program in this nation, and one that grudgingly has been agreed to by the agency.
The criteria were obtained by The Star Tuesday. They offer a first glimpse at the issues that will shape the program and they hint at the substance of future debate on a subject that so far has been marked by discord.
In agreeing to explore such a program, FEMA, under intense political pressure, reversed a standing policy against issuing such devices. The agency's objections were based on concerns that the public could misuse the hoods - that rather than helping to save lives, the hoods would become a safety risk.
The page-and-a-half of guidelines, laid out in a letter from FEMA's Atlanta office to the Alabama EMA, touch upon four main issues: the selection of the hoods, the criteria for receiving a hood, the training of individuals to receive the hoods, and the maintenance and inspection of the hoods.
Judging by the documents, the reservations voiced in the past remain: "FEMA always has, and always will have, concerns with the use of hoods by the general public," the document reads. But, at the same time, the criteria themselves represent a first step in the establishment of what could be a groundbreaking program in an age when chemical dangers proliferate.
FEMA initially said the creation of the program would be a collaborative process with county and state officials. The criteria, however, are cast in definitive language, with no apparent room for disagreement on the issues it deals with.
A FEMA spokesman Tuesday declined to comment on whether the guidelines are negotiable.
Overall, the document places the burden for selecting a hood and developing a training regimen on state and county officials - "Calhoun County EMA in collaboration with the State of Alabama EMA." There is no indication of how FEMA would be involved in the program after training and inspection methodologies are set up.
At first glance, the single most striking criterion is the one requiring the county to tailor its public education campaign to highlight the duct tape and plastic kits, the protective equipment favored by FEMA.
Such a campaign would undermine the county's insistence that these shelter-in-place kits, when used alone, don't offer the necessary level of protection, given the toxicity of the nerve and blister agents stored at the depot. It is this insistence that led to the county's requests for the protective hoods as well as to its requests for measures beyond what FEMA recommends for protecting emergency responders and schoolchildren.
An official from the Calhoun County EMA said the agency will withhold comment on the criteria until the Alabama EMA drafts a response, which is likely to come early next week. A state official would offer no sense of what that response might be.
A second criterion that could spark heated debate is the one that would make the Anniston City Council a player in the formation of the program.
"The hood selected," the FEMA documents read, "shall be deemed acceptable to the general public as indicated by affirmative vote of the Calhoun County Commission and the City of Anniston Council in selection of the hood."
The commission has been at the forefront of this issue, but the city council has heretofore been reluctant to get involved. Last summer, the council tabled a county-led effort to oppose the startup of the Army's incinerator unless a number of protective measures were provided.
That was as close, in recent memory, as the city council has come to taking official action on the issue. The council members have never been called on to make known their positions on the hoods. Thus, making the program contingent on the council's vote would, in effect, throw a wild card into the mix.
The same could possibly be said of the county commission, but only because this is an election year with all five seats up. Two commissioners are abandoning their seats and the other three face reelection challenges. One challenger, Larry Sylvester, already has voiced his opposition to issuing the protective hoods.
As a result, a vote taken after the November election could yield substantially different results than one taken before.
These criteria aside, most of the requirements are expected of a program that will put complicated and potentially dangerous pieces of equipment in the hands of the general public.
For instance, FEMA is requiring the manufacturer to possess a liability insurance policy as well as requiring training and medical evaluations for users. The agency also is seeking timelines for the development of training courses and a methodology for evaluating the training effort.
