This article originally provided by The Boone Standard

April 8, 2008

WARN system not forgotten

Lawrence Keeney
county news editor

The system designed to give Boone County residents adequate warning if a disaster is imminent has not been forgotten by commissioners and emergency services office administrators in the county.

As a matter of fact, according to 911 Director Greg Lay, once a final word on funding for the new WARN System is assured, the system could be in place "in a matter of days."

Activists from various communities in Boone County came to the commission last year with a laundry list of possible scenarios that frightened them. The county is bordered on at least two sides by a series of coal company slurry ponds that posed what they deemed a massive danger to residents.

Most of these ponds are filled with slurry, which is a mixture of water and coal dust. It is the byproduct of certain mining processes. Most coal operators contain the runoff in ponds or behind man-made dams. Most of these containment vessels are entirely safe, but environmental activists and some former mining company personnel have questioned whether the ponds and dams could withstand the force of a flood or even a terrorist attack.

These activists and county emergency services professionals have worked together over the past few years attempting to formulate an evacuation plan, as well as a system to warn residents of small communities, or even the whole county, in case a pond or dam is breached. The WARN System is the product of that.

According to Lay, WARN is a system which allows specifically chosen emergency responders to program a computer system to call homes and businesses in the path of a possible disaster.

"If we think everyone in Van, for instance, is in danger, we can program the system to call every structure with a telephone in that community," Lay said.

He said the county had secured funding through an unusual source, the Kanawha County Health Department; however, due to some undisclosed reason the money were lost.

"We think we'll be getting it back soon," he said.

Sylvester community activists Mary Miller and Pauline Canterbury came to last week's meeting of the Boone County Commission to find out just what was going on with WARN.

"Every week our neighbors are asking us what's going on with the system," Miller told commissioners. "Our people face this every day. We live in fear every time there's a storm."

Miller and Canterbury said they were satisfied with the progress Lay outlined, but asked that they, and everyone else in Sylvester, be kept up to speed about when and if the WARN system is put into place.

Activist Maria Gunnoe is also pleased with the progress of WARN, but expressed other worries in an interview with The Boone Standard.

Gunnoe, Community Outreach and Issue Organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), has worked for a number of years on local environmental issues, including the problems she said surrounds containment structures.

"I'm pleased to hear that the WARN system apparatus is probably going to be a reality in Boone County soon," she said. "At the same time, however, I have to wonder why the coal companies aren't coughing up the funds necessary to put the WARN System in place, and why the Office of Emergency Services and the Boone County Commission isn't making them."

Gunnoe continued, "In my opinion these measures should have been in place long before the dams were constructed. Does all the money have to go through Wall Street? Can't more money stay here to keep our schools open and our roads and communities safer?"

For some time, OVEC activists have maintained that more effort was needed to ensure community safety before the ponds were even built.

"Effective evacuation plans should have been in place before the dams were permitted to be constructed. Where else in America are you going to build dams that hold nine billion gallons of coal sludge and not have to maintain a realistic plan of what to do if one was to fail for any reason?" Gunnoe asked.