PARIS – Oxford County will receive more than a quarter-million dollars to pay for equipment deemed necessary by the federal Office of Homeland Security.

Emergency Management Agency Director Dan Schorr told Oxford County commissioners Tuesday he will be getting a formal letter soon outlining the $228,256 in Homeland Security First Response grants.

Of the total, $154,862 will be given to the county. The towns of Rumford, Mexico and Dixfield will receive a joint grant of $39,000, while Norway, Paris and Oxford will receive $29,000, he said.

“They have a laundry list of equipment” that can be purchased with the grant funds for use by local emergency, fire, rescue and police departments, said Schorr. Most of the protective specialized equipment is needed when responding to chemical-based emergencies that could be caused by an act of terrorism.

Schorr said decontamination teams being set up in northern and southern parts of the county, and other emergency responders, will meet to talk about use of the grant funds at 6 p.m. July 2 at the Oxford County Regional Communications Center in Paris. Mead-Westvaco Corp. has long had its own decontamination team in place to handle accidental chemical spills at the mill.

The county is also getting an additional $4,800 to cover administration of the grant funds, he said.

Schorr said other grant money is available from the Homeland Security office for towns and counties to use in protecting their critical infrastructure, such as water district wellheads, during periods when the country’s terrorism threat goes on orange alert. The more serious alert level was put into place during Operation Iraqi Freedom and just this past Memorial Day, he said.

Schorr said the grant funds should be “more than enough” to cover costs, even though the amount is much smaller than what some larger Maine counties are getting. It represents the first Homeland Security funding to trickle down to the local level since the World Trade Center attack Sept. 11, 2001.

ggeraghty@sunjournal.com