by Lawrence Keeney, The Boone Standard, April 4, 2008

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.

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.

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

Sylvester community activists Mary Miller and Pauline Canterberry came to last weeks Boone County Commission meeting to find out just what was going on with WARN.

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

Miller and Canterberry 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.

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.

"Im pleased to hear that the WARN system 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 arent coughing up the funds necessary to put the WARN System in place, and why the Office of Emergency Services and the Boone County Commission isnt making them."