Carbon County has received approximately $2 million to help begin the process of moving emergency responder radio frequencies from analog to digital.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners approved a statewide Interconnectivity grant in the amount of $2,006,167.06 from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. The money will be used for four items at the 911 Communications Center.

These include:

• $24,787: ILEC Post Migration 911 services reimbursement associated with the 911 call delivery.

• $20,833 for NG911 GIS Post Migration, which supports personnel, professional services, training, hardware, software and licensing costs associated with maintaining and uploading the required NG911 GIS date to GeoCOMM GIS Data Hub.

• $1,922,000: The Carbon/Schuylkill New Shared Radio public safety answering points, which will utilize land mobile radio systems to notify, dispatch and communicate with responders during emergencies.

• $38,547.06: NECORE ESInet maintenance of the public safety answering points that utilize an Emergency Services IP Network system to provide a reliable network infrastructure for 911 calls and services.

Commissioner Wayne Nothstein highlighted the partnership between Carbon and Schuylkill for the radio system upgrade from analog to digital.

“This is only the first step,” he said, noting that this installs the equipment needed for the upgrade to occur in Carbon. Schuylkill already has digital radio frequencies for emergency services. “This process is probably going to take maybe up to five years ... but I’m confident it will be completed sooner.”

Nothstein said that there is a federal grant for approximately $4.5 million that the county is waiting to hear about for the project.

“That would be over $4 million to complete the infrastructure for the upgrade to the system.”

Some departments have already begun making preparations to purchase the new digital portable radios, which could cost upwards of $10,000 each. Several communities have already put in Local Share Account grant applications in to try and secure some funding for the purchases.

“I am cautioning emergency responders and elected officials that this is going to be a multi-year process,” he said, noting that most likely grants will not cover everything at one time. “It’s an extremely expensive process but it is a good system. It’s going to be for the betterment of emergency response.”

The purpose of changing over to digital is to help provide better communication between responders across county lines.

Nothstein said that right now, it can be difficult when responding to other counties because of different frequencies.

This, he said, he believes is one reason that could cost a responder their life because without proper communication, they aren’t aware of everything going on.

“When you’re dealing with three of four different counties at one scene, it makes things difficult to communicate what’s going on,” Nothstein said.

Carbon and Schuylkill officials approved a memorandum of understanding for a regional communication, dispatch and recording network in April.

At that time, the estimated the costs for the updated system to be $5,324,500, and including work on five tower sites, seven dispatch consoles and a regional eventide logging recorder.

In July, the county applied for just under $1 million from the Commonwealth Finance Authority for a Monroe County Local Share Account grant. The money if approved without any changes, would be for the purchase of 92 portable radios for local police, as well as county adult and juvenile probation offices and the sheriff’s department.