Funding for a new emergency operations center in Port Gibson has been inserted into federal legislation to fund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The $750,000 allocation was among items in the department’s $42.6 billion budget passed Monday by the House Appropriations Subcommittee, according to a release from the office of U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

The spending plan must pass the full House and Senate before it becomes law.

Such facilities usually serve as headquarters for local disaster response officials during declared emergencies. The planned EOC in Port Gibson would serve as an EOC for “the southwestern region of the Second Congressional District.”

A civil defense building was constructed as a base for local officials when Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, which is in rural Claiborne County, went into service in 1985. Reports are that the bunker-type building is no longer in use due to mold and other problems and employees are using a manufactured home on the Mississippi 18 site.

“The Port Gibson community having this type of infrastructure not only shores up a vulnerability to potential natural and nuclear threats posed, but offers the needed regional and rural homeland security presence that is currently lacking,” Thompson said in the release.