MOUNT VERNON — After years of controversy and debate between officials across the county, the Knox County hazmat trailer, and the truck purchased to tow it, could soon be sold.

During a special meeting Monday afternoon, members of the Knox County Fire Chiefs Association unanimously passed a motion to recommend the sale of the truck and trailer, and use the funds from the sale to purchase VHF radio equipment for the EMS and fire departments in the county.

“I think this was an important issue to put to rest that’s been lingering for quite some time,” Mount Vernon Fire Department Chief Shawn Christy said.

Christy said issues of man-hours, liability and maintenance cost for the equipment, which has been in the custody of the MVFD for the past two years, have been a burden on his department, due to limited resources.

Since the trailer was purchased in 2003 with federal Homeland Security grant money for $71,500, the trailer and the 2004 pickup purchased for $30,037.25 a year later with more federal grant money, have been moved back and forth between locations across the county while fire departments attempted to form a countywide hazmat team with which to staff the trailer. In the post-9/11 climate of 2003, Homeland Security/Weapons of Mass Destruction dollars were given freely by the federal government to emergency management agencies across the country.

The trailer has never been used for an actual hazmat emergency in the county. Fire chiefs at the meeting said there has not been a major hazmat situation in the county for about 10 years.

Central Ohio Joint Fire District Chief Joe Porter, a fire chief when the Knox County Emergency Management Association bought the trailer, said during Monday’s meeting that to his knowledge, county fire chiefs were not consulted before the trailer was purchased.

Once the equipment was brought into the county, Knox County fire departments, many of which are volunteer or part-paid departments, were given the task of training technicians and coming up with a plan to maintain, staff and store the equipment. The limited resources of small county fire departments could not support the large expenditures necessary to provide additional hazmat training to firefighters throughout the county, maintain and insure the trailer and truck, and supply expendable materials for the trailer as they were used or past their expiration date.

“We tried, we all tried,” Porter said Monday. “Everyone gave it their best shot.”

The COJFD housed the trailer for several months two years ago, Porter said, and trained several firefighters as hazmat technicians in the hope that a countywide team could be formed.

“The trailer being here was the driving force for that training,” Porter said.

Echoing Christy, Porter said the resources were too much for his department.

“We don’t have the finances to keep the trailer up-to-date, and replace and maintain equipment and supplies,” he said.

Porter also pointed out that firefighting equipment in a county this size must be versatile and have multiple uses.

“Every piece of equipment in the county has more than one use,” Porter said.

However, federal grant limitations require the pickup and trailer be used only for hazmat or WMD incidents.

Members of the chiefs association agreed that to insure and maintain a pickup which can rarely, if ever, be used, was not a wise use of limited fire department budgets.

Knox County Deputy EMA Director Brian Hess said his agency would comment on the future of the trailer after the fire chiefs’ recommendation is reviewed by Director Marie Blubaugh next week.

The county commissioners expressed frustration over the way the situation with the truck and trailer have been handled.

“The whole thing, from our perspective, was a bit embarrassing,” Commissioner Alan Stockberger said during a commissioners’ meeting Monday. “Embarrassing and disappointing. It’s been very frustrating.”

“I think it was a total waste of taxpayer dollars from the federal government on down,” Commissioner Tom McLarnan said. “A total waste.”

Stockberger said there was no way to pinpoint the exact cost of insurance paid on the equipment over the years, because the county maintains a blanket policy for county equipment, and the trailer and truck were just a portion of that fleet.

The MVFD has paid insurance premiums on the equipment for the past two years because the apparatus is stored at its station. Christy said he was unsure about the exact costs to his department for additional insurance. Porter said that when the trailer was housed at the COJFD, the insurance cost his department between $5,000 to $6,000.

Paperwork provided by the Knox County EMA shows that in 2004, $19,167.32 of Homeland Security dollars was spent on “equipment for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, environmental response vehicle.”

In 2005, $2,026.50 was spent on sway bars and a cap for the hazmat truck, using more Homeland Security money. In 2006, $9,628.51 was spent on unspecified equipment for the hazmat truck.

Figures for 2007 and 2008 were not included in the summary of Homeland Security grants released by the EMA.

Calling the purchase of the hazmat trailer a “classic case of putting the cart before the horse,” Stockberger said he hopes the equipment will be purchased by another county which can put it to good use. Blubaugh told fire chiefs at their meeting last month that two counties have expressed interest in purchasing the trailer.

Any money the sale of the truck and trailer might bring must be used to purchase equipment that was eligible for Homeland Security grant money in 2003, according to Blubaugh. She told the chiefs she would make a list of that equipment available for their review.

Several of the chiefs said improving radio technology in the county would be a prudent use of Homeland Security dollars. That recommendation will be sent to Knox County EMA later this week, and a decision will then be made about how to proceed.

MVFD Assistant Chief Chris Menapace called the original purchase of the trailer a backward process.

“You don’t form a team around a piece of apparatus. You purchase the apparatus to meet the needs of your team, and the process was initiated backward,” he said.

“We have the equipment,” Christy said. “But if we don’t have the personnel or the man-hours, it’s a useless piece of equipment.”

Porter said he hopes that someday the county departments will have the resources to form a hazmat team, but the limited resources of mostly rural Knox County fire departments do not support it at this time.

“The whole thing was 10 or 15 years ahead of its time,” he said.