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Towns eye funds for Yankee plan
By SUSAN SMALLHEER Sleeper told a gathering of
regional and state officials involved in the emergency planning effort at
Vermont Yankee that he would support a grant request for a portion of the
state’s $14 million Homeland Security funds. Sleeper estimated that such
an education campaign would cost at least $200,000. Brattleboro Town Manager
Jerry Remillard told emergency planners that his town’s top priority was a
regional public education campaign. The town has recently
rewritten its emergency evacuation plan, although it hasn’t started the public
comment period on it. Remillard said after the
meeting that “It doesn’t work well
down here to play the ‘big town, little town’ game. We have a pretty good
track record here of helping each other out,” Remillard said. Sleeper said the Homeland
Security funds were a good fit for local needs, since the money is supposed to
be used for planning in the event of nuclear, chemical and biological attacks. “And no plan is effective
unless the people have a clear understanding of what to do,” Sleeper said. Sleeper said of the $14
million the state has received, $11 million must go to local efforts. Instead of waiting for the
Legislature to appropriate the money, Sleeper said, the Homeland Security funds
could be in local hands within 60 days. Entergy Nuclear currently
pays about $800,000 to the state of Entergy Nuclear should be
paying for the cost of the campaign, and not taxpayers, according to Clay
Turnbull of Nuclear Free Vermont. Earlier this year a proposal
to increase funding to $1.1 million was shot down by legislators, who said there
was a lack of documentation that the money was being used, according to both
Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, and Rep. Patricia O’Donnell, R-Vernon. Both legislators said the
radiological emergency planning budget had been level funded at $800,000 this
year because of a lack of documentation from state officials. But White said
more funds could be asked for in January — midway through the budget year —
if a case could be made that the money was needed. White and O’Donnell both
said Monday night’s budget meeting was the way the budget was supposed to be
drawn up, according to state law. It was the first time such a meeting was held.
“We will approve what’s
needed, but we need to know what’s needed,” O’Donnell told the gathering
at the Brattleboro Retreat’s conference center. Albert Lewis, who has been
the director of the state Office of Emergency Planning since January, said he
had proposed the $1.1 million in spending, with big increases in the funds that
go to the five towns in the 10-mile emergency evacuation zone, as well as for
the state’s new emergency planning office in Lewis outlined how the
$800,000 was spent. Locally, the single biggest chunk goes to For running the emergency
evacuation center, Select Boards in Dummerston
and Anne Rider, chairwoman of
the Guilford Select Board, said her town asked for about $12,000 in additional
equipment such as cell phones, radios and pagers, as well as funding for a
part-time person to help coordinate the town’s plan. According to “No, that will not work,
what we have in place,” she said. A proposal for a town van to
help transport people in an emergency was rejected by Lewis, she said. Sleeper said his
top-to-bottom review of the state’s emergency plan for Yankee was about 45
days away from completion. O’Donnell was the only “It’s not an issue in Contact Susan Smallheer at
susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com. |