Central Pennsylvania Firefighters Working Towards New Training Center
Over a month ago, the township's Board of Supervisors issued a list of 25 conditions that the county, which owns the site, would have to fulfill in order for it to be built.
Thursday night's two-and-a-half-hour hearing on the conditions allowed members of the training site committee and the board to air concerns and led to a general agreement on the terms.
The document will be revised, sent to the county Board of Commissioners for review and voted on at the board's next meeting.
The three biggest issues the supervisors wanted addressed were related to the environment.
Penn State's fire-training site closed in 1997, leaving contaminated ground behind. Township officials wanted to ensure its residents were protected from a similar fate.
Under the conditional-use agreement proposed, all water used for training exercises would have be collected and sent through an oil-water separator to minimize the amount of water the site took from municipal stores.
Second, the site's operators would have to pay for water testing on wells adjacent to the property, as well as the monitoring well on its property before construction. Those tests would set a baseline for pollutants found in wells. The training site would test its well every year and submit reports to the township.
The biggest discussion came about what kind of materials would be burned on site. After visiting fire-training sites in Lancaster and Lewistown, the board initially favored using a propane and theatrical smoke system. The supervisors said it provided a cleaner burn and would make training more effective.
However, the firefighters on the committee advocated for use of less-expensive wood pallets, straw and excelsior, saying those materials provided the best simulation of real-world situations firefighters would encounter.
Supervisor John Elnitski inquired whether it would make sense for the county to build a propane facility and use Lewistown's wood pallet facility a few times a year.
Committee member Steve Triebold said competition to use the Lewistown site is high and scheduling a time there for a burn is very difficult. "We can't just call over there," he said.
In the second round of discussions, Tim Schreffler, chairman of the training site committee, told the board that three separate entities had rules for running a live-fire burn.
They were followed in training facilities across the state, Schreffler said, and would be followed here. That seemed to assuage the board members' fears and they agreed to allow those materials, termed "Class A," into the agreement.
Afterward, Commissioner Steve Dershem, who attended the meeting for the county's executive officers, said he felt confident.
"I feel pretty good about the process right now," Dershem said. "We just want to make sure we get the language where everyone is comfortable."