Security funds give a boost to rural counties

By Josh Loftin
Deseret Morning News
Published: Sunday, June 19, 2005 8:39 p.m. MDT
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With a population of less than 1,000 and its corner-of-nowhere location on the world map of political hot spots, Daggett County doesn't look much like a terrorist target nor a logical place to spend much homeland security money.

Yet the tiny rural county in northeast Utah received approximately $250,000 of U.S. Department of Homeland Security money in fiscal year 2004 alone. With it, the county sheriff's office was able to purchase new laptop computers for every officer, a mobile command vehicle and even pay for training on how to handle a terrorist attack.

It is where that training took place that highlights why the area might be a noticeable and desirable target for terrorists — Flaming Gorge Dam. After all, an attack on the dam would present not only major safety problems but interrupt power and water for the state.

Add in Questar's primary natural gas storage facility, and the county has two locations that amount to "critical infrastructure," as far as the department is concerned. Count as well the number of tourists who visit during the summer, and Daggett becomes an important area for security, Sheriff Allen Campbell said.

"We get no money based on our population," he said. "But we have two of the highest-security targets in the dam and the Questar facility, and on any given summer weekend we have 50,000 people visiting. We feel like we have received a fair share, because we are burdened."

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For rural counties with miniscule county budgets, the homeland security funding has provided law enforcement agencies a way to purchase major pieces of equipment that would have been practically impossible to buy with county money, Campbell said. In Daggett County, for example, the sheriff's office spent $120,000 on the mobile command unit, something "we would have never been able to afford, because we don't have that kind of money just lying around."

Because the money is distributed regionally, it also allowed multiple counties to coordinate their purchases so they could work together in the case of a disaster or, on a smaller level, assist each other to catch fleeing suspects.

Now, for instance, Daggett, Uintah and Duchesne counties are all on the same communications system and all their officers have laptops that can tap into the networks of all of the departments.

"Should an event happen, there is equipment that can help all of us," he said. "Even though the equipment was to go to a specific county, it can be used by any of us."

Almost as important as the funding is the fact that the money goes to a regional group, which then has to decide together how to distribute that money, said Dave Owens, Kane County's director of the office of emergency services. Because of that, law enforcement officials from the five counties in their region meet monthly, which builds their relationships, and learn what each of their neighboring counties already owns.

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