The president has signed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act for 2010 (H.R. 2892) – providing TEEX’s National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center with $23 million in funding under the Homeland Security National Training Program Cooperative Agreement.

Differences between the bills passed by the House and Senate earlier this summer were resolved in conference committee in October. The bill was signed into law by the President on Oct. 28. Rep. Chet Edwards and Rep. John Carter actively supported and shepherded the funding request through the House of Representatives, while Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Sen. John Cornyn were instrumental in getting the funding written into the Senate version of the bill.

NERRTC is a founding member of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (NDPC), which provides training and technical assistance to jurisdictions to prevent, protect, respond to, and recover from all kinds of catastrophic events, said TEEX Associate Director Bill May.

Including NERRTC, which is based in College Station, there are seven members of the NDPC involved in the National Training Program. Other training programs are based in Anniston, AL; Socorro, NM; Baton Rouge, LA; Las Vegas, NV; Pueblo, CO; and Honolulu, HI.

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