The Georgia Emergency Management Agency has notified the Pike County Board of Commissioners (BOC) that Pike County has received federal approval of the Multi-jurisdictional Mitigation Plan covering Concord, Molena, Meansville, Williamson and Zebulon.

This approval entitles Pike County and its cities to apply for funding in the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and the Pre-disaster Mitigation Competitive Program, which it could not do beforehand.

The BOC had been notified last fall that if the county did not submit an approved plan prior to June 2009, the county would not be eligible to apply again for a lengthy period of time.

Although Pike County has not experienced a significant weather-related emergency or natural disaster for a long period of time, officials took immediate steps to finalize a plan.

To achieve this goal, the BOC approved the hiring of Pete Nelms to assist in the finalization and submission of a hazard mitigation program to the Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

Each city in the county was included in the process so the final submitted plan would be uniform and better fit the specific needs of the county. The plan was then formalized and adopted by each city council as well as the BOC prior to being submitted for consideration by the Pike County Emergency Management Agency (PEMA).

“This is a major step forward in the preparation and future planning for catastrophic events in Pike County,” said Pike County Manager Steve Marro.

According to Marro, the plan will continue to be monitored, modified and renewed through the PEMA office and its director, Mike Singleton.