Times Observer file photo by Brian Ferry A crew from Conewango Township drops another load of dirt onto a sulfuric acid spill on Route 62 in North Warren in late June. Municipal emergency management coordinators are part of the response for these types of incidents and a directive from the state makes the training bar for that position - in the view of local officials - unreasonably high.

Each municipality in the Commonwealth — nearly 2,600 in total — is required to appoint an emergency management coordinator.

That position is to lead disaster preparation efforts for the municipality and also act as a leader during times of crisis.

But new directives from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency raise the training bar so high that county officials are concerned about the ability to keep those roles filled.

And that could impact emergency response on the ground.

Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison took the issue before the Council of Governments on Wednesday.

Documentation for the certification that is required shows a slate of 12 classes plus in-services, evidence of a 30-minute public speaking engagement, publication of an article and awards received in the field, among other qualifications.

In addition to those qualifications, McCorrison said 75 hours of continuing education is required.

It’s a level of training on par with what is expected by county public safety staff.

But many of these emergency coordinator positions are volunteer in nature and “everybody struggled with funding local-level” emergency management coordinators, McCorrison said.

He said the position’s importance is tied to “local knowledge on local resources.”

The idea behind the EMC is to be able to “make life easier” for an incident commander, he explained. One recent example was the acid spill on Route 62 through North Warren when the incident commander needed dirt to absorb the chemicals.

McCorrison does not think he can find one person in each municipality to meet this new burden, which county officials pushed back on without success.

“I think that the COG is the perfect vessel to look at doing some sort of regionalization (or) consolidation,” he said. “We cannot put 26 people through this. I think we need to find four or five dedicated people and have them cover a group of municipalities.”

He said that’s the only way to respond to the new directives “reasonably.”

“It’s nuts,” Clarendon Borough President Paul Pascuzzi said, asking how much time local officials have to put something together.

“Realistically, a year,” McCorrison said.

“Now we need to find out what is the next step, what’s the proposal,” Pascuzzi said, “and how are we going to do that?”

He proposed that the issue become an agenda item for the COG.

“This is exactly what these intergovernmental organizations should be doing,” the COG’s consultant, Alan Kugler, said. “This is exactly why we wanted to formalize the COG.”

He suggested that this is a backdoor attempt by the state to force regionalization and a failure by the General Assembly to not tackle the issue, leaving the agency to set the rules.