27-year employee Gwen Coleman had been interim director.

Interim Director Gwen Coleman was appointed director of the Warren County Emergency Management Agency Monday, paving the way for supervisors to advertise for an operations officer.

An employee in the agency and in its permitting office for 27 years, Coleman, 49, had served as interim director of the hazard mitigation and preparedness office since Sept. 20.

The building permit function was split off as a separate department in this fiscal year’s budget, despite both functions operating out of the same office in the Warren County Courthouse.

Coleman said later that among her office’s goals, in addition to planning for natural disasters and industrial and large-scale accidents in Warren County, would be to assist Claiborne County emergency officials in updating evacuation routes leading from Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Station, should a second reactor be built and should the plans become necessary in the event of an emergency.

That project, pushed by NuStart Energy, a consortium of nearly a dozen energy companies, is still in the planning phase.

The agency also will draft plans to address potential hazards at an ethanol plant planned for the Port of Vicksburg by Ergon Refining Inc. and Bunge North American.

In May, supervisors voted 3-2 to oust six-year director L.W. &#8220Bump” Callaway in favor of naming E-911 Dispatch Center director Geoffrey Greetham to lead the agency on an interim basis. Greetham performed both jobs for four months until taking himself out of consideration for a permanent appointment in emergency management, citing discomfort with the way the board handled the shakeup.

Coleman is the EMA’s longest-tenured employee, having served as a planner in the agency when it was known as Vicksburg-Warren County Civil Defense. She has also served on the E-911 Commission since her interim appointment in September, filling a seat occupied by the county emergency management director reserved by a 1998 city-county agreement.

ON THE AGENDA.

In other business, the board: