Municipal officers plan for hazard mitigation

GREENWOOD — Nearly forty leaders from area communities gathered here for the March meeting of the Oxford County Municipal Officers Association to hear guest speaker Carol Fuller.

Fuller, a representative from the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments spoke on the Emergency Mitigation Plan currently being prepared for Oxford County.  This plan stems from the passage in Congress of the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000.

“The important thing from the perspective of all of the communities,” Fuller said, “was that they said that towns, counties, states, had to have a hazard mitigation plan in place if they were going to be able to get hazard mitigation grants or pre disaster mitigation grants.”

Fuller stated that the deadline for this voluntary compliance was November, 2004.  She stated that not having a plan would not prevent eligibility for grant money to repair damage from disasters, but was intended to provide funds to repair issues to a state “better than what you had before.”  Funds could also be used for to make capitol improvements before a disaster struck.

Under the act, funds would be made available, when the President declared a disaster, for mitigation.  Fuller gave an example of FEMA providing $1,000,000.  In this case, 15%, or another $150,000 would be made available for mitigation grants to bring infrastructures to a “better than before” state.

“In a lot of cases, what you had before would only get washed away the next time you had a flood, or had some other kind of event,” Fuller said.  “The idea behind mitigation is to take steps before there is a disaster event so that the next time hopefully you will not have damage, or your damage will be a lot lower.”

Fuller stated that seed money amounting to $360,000 had been provided to Maine to create the plans, which the State then filtered down to the counties.

Dan Schorr, Emergency Management Agency Director for Oxford County, explained how the emergency planning had fallen to AVCOG.

“What we did is initially, not knowing about AVCOG, we decided that my office, we didn’t have the time to write county wide plans.  The initial idea was, those towns that wanted to participate, and write their own, we would provide the grant money top do it.  That was about two years ago now.

“That went along fine until everybody started sitting down trying to do the work.  And then they said, ‘Hey I can’t do this, I need help.’  So then we said ‘OK, we’ll go to AVCOG.

“So we lost a little time,” said Schorr, “but AVCOG now is doing it for the lump sum of the grant money.  The only thing we have to invest as a county, and as municipalities, is the time and the people to provide the information we need to put in the plans.”

AVCOG has been working on the plans since September 2003.

Fuller stated that, besides already having a working relationship with many of the towns in Oxford County, AVCOG had completed Emergency Mitigation plans for Androscoggin County “roughly a year ago.” 

She did acknowledge that FEMA has yet to comment on any of those completed plans or, to her knowledge, on any plans submitted from Maine.

Fuller then walked the municipal officers present through the various aspects of the emergency mitigation plans.  Significant hazards include winter storms, flooding and ice jams, dam failure, drought and wildfire, earthquakes, and hazardous materials incidents. Earthquakes actually are a medium risk Fuller said, although dam failures remain a “huge” risk for area towns, with over 80 dams in Oxford County.

Many municipal officers have expressed concerns over HAZMAT incidents due to increased over the road transport of chemicals and other hazardous materials. However, while participation by towns is not mandatory, Fuller expressed concern over the number of towns from which she had received no participatory input on preparing their mitigation plans.

“This is where some of you people still need to help us,” she said.

Although they will remain eligible for normal disaster funds, towns that do not provide information to AVCOG and adopt a mitigation plan will not be eligible for any additional mitigation grants.  It was again stressed that these mitigation grants could be used to make capitol improvements before some disaster struck, and/or to repair damages to a “better than before” state.