AUGUSTA – It’s taken three years, but the last of $1.4 million that was supposed to have been awarded between 1999 and 2001 to Maine’s Emergency Management Agency to aid the state in preparing for acts of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, was received on Thursday.

Though the money had been allocated before Sept. 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks on that day provided the impetus to get the funding pushed through.

“It’s been a cumbersome process to get the money from the Department of Justice,” Art Cleaves, director of MEMA, said. “It’s been troubling for me that we’ve been this long in getting to this point.”

The funds, awarded by the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, will be used by MEMA to purchase hazardous material protection, detection and decontamination equipment for eight hazardous materials teams in Maine, Cleaves said. Maine currently has 14 hazardous materials teams of 22 people, but should have around 20 teams to cover the state in case of an event involving biological or chemical agents, or radiological, nuclear or explosive materials.

Of the 14 teams, only an Army National Guard hazardous materials unit in Waterville is currently fully capable of handling an event involving weapons of mass destruction, Cleaves said. The Waterville-based unit will be responsible for training eight of the existing units on how to use the new equipment that will be purchased with the federal funds. Which eight units will get the training and equipment has yet to be determined, Cleaves said.

The grant money will be used to purchase 91 Level A hazardous material suits at $600 each, several decontamination tents that come equipped with four showers at about $17,000 each, mobile decontamination units, communications equipment and various other items that include self-contained breathing apparatus and other pieces of protective equipment.

Several hospitals will be beneficiaries of some of the equipment, with Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor likely to receive one of the decontamination tents, Cleaves said.

“We also have to obtain [more] funding to take care of first responders,” Cleaves said. “Policemen, EMS drivers and hospital workers don’t have any protection in case of an event involving weapons of mass destruction and they are among the first to be on the scene.”

The difficulty in receiving the grant money for 1999-2001 is due to delays within the Department of Justice, MEMA spokeswoman Lynette Miller said Thursday. Maine didn’t receive the $400,000 it needed to begin work on a strategic plan until May 2001. The plan was required to get the rest of the funding.

Maine finished the strategic plan in November of 2001, just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, and finally received $1,043,000 on Thursday to fund operations scheduled for 1999-2001, Cleaves said. Some of the initial $400,000 was also used to purchase emergency equipment.

“There wasn’t a lot of interest in this prior to the 11th of September,” Cleaves said. “There was a sense of complacency before Sept. 11 that has even started to slip back in, in the six months since then.”

MEMA will complete financial orders in the next two weeks to make way for a second grant from the Department of Justice as part of a series of grants totaling $243 million for all 50 states discussed in 1998, Cleaves said. The second grant should be for around $3 million.

But the money, even with another $3 million, is not enough, Cleaves said.

“$1.4 million is a very small amount of money,” he said. “We need 20 times that.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Governor’s Association reported to President George Bush’s administration that Maine still needs another $25 million to bring all current emergency management systems up to date and to then sustain those systems, Cleaves said. That money will likely be included in the $3.5 billion Bush has budgeted for the 2003 fiscal year for homeland security. That period will begin in October, 2002, and 75 percent of the money will go to local and state agencies, such as MEMA.

“We’re very excited that we’re starting to get the money,” Cleaves said. “I just wish that we could have gotten it sooner.”