Assistance is on the way for area residents recovering from the flooding of recent months, Emergency Management Director Ed Rock told the Kosciusko County Commissioners Tuesday.
But the verdict is still out on whether public municipalities also will qualify for aid.Rock told the commissioners 22 Kosciusko County households met with Federal Emergency Management agents while the disaster recovery center was open in Winona Lake Thursday through Monday. Help was available to residents because Indiana qualified for a federal disaster declaration after widespread flooding damaged homes and businesses around the state.
Rock said Kosciusko County also submitted damage assessments to FEMA for assistance for damage to public infrastructure. FEMA accepted $400,000 of the assessed public damage in Kosciusko County, which Rock said exceeds the $238,000 needed to qualify for aid. However, the county will not officially be eligible for public aid until the state receives another federal disaster declaration focused on the public sector. For that to happen, Rock told the commissioners, FEMA must accept an assessment of $7.5 million in damages statewide.
The commissioners approved a request from District 2 emergency management for Kosciusko County to become the fiscal agent managing a state grant to help fund a transition of emergency response radio systems within the district to an 800 Mhz system. Rock told the commissioners the state will most likely require the transition to the 800 Mhz system in the near future in an effort to ease statewide emergency communications. Rock said the grant would fund equipment changes in the emergency dispatch centers to make them capable of supporting an 800 Mhz system. Rock said the amount of grant money available has not yet been set.
"While they're forcing it and willing to pay for it, I guess this is the time to get it," Commissioner Ron Truex said.
In other news, a maintenance job completed about three years ago is still costing the county money. County Administrator Ron Robinson told the commissioners the county has yet to reach closure with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management after removing a 10,000-gallon gas tank from under a county parking north of the Justice Building.
Robinson said the county installed three wells to test the site for contamination. He said only one of the wells showed slight traces of contamination.
The problem, Robinson told the commissioners, is that IDEM changed the testing requirements while tests were being conducted on the site. Now, Robinson said, IDEM is requiring the county to implement a testing cycle which will cost the county more than $2,000 every three months. If carried out to the maximum length of eight quarters, the cycle would cost the county $18,000.
Robinson said the situation is a case of the state wasting the county's money.
"Every time we do something, they want something else done," Robinson said.
Commissioner Brad Jackson agreed. "We're wasting money, period," he said.
The commissioners voted to pay for a three-quarter cycle, then send a letter to IDEM requesting closure.
