The Arlington Fire Department may soon have a response plan ready in case of an emergency at any of the city’s gas wells.

Fire Chief Don Crowson presented a Natural Gas Well Preparedness and Response Program plan to the Arlington City Council Tuesday, which outlined the steps to create a response program.

The program is scheduled to be complete and running by March 2013, but councilwoman Sheri Capehart and councilman Robert Rivera asked if the date could be moved up.

“Time is of the essence,” Rivera said. “If we are in agreement that we are going to move forward with this program, then it’s best to go ahead and move forward with the endeavor. We should get the additional firefighters trained and get their responsibilities mapped and outlined, so we can more efficiently get this process together to benefit the city as a whole.”

Councilman Jimmy Bennett said the city should not rush into the program.

“I like for the process to take its due course and not unnecessarily accelerate a project, despite its merits,” Bennett said. “The process is there for a reason. It allows us to examine issues in such a way that we can make sure that we haven’t missed something.”

Crowson said the program is not designed to control the safety of gas wells but rather initially respond to emergencies and work with gas and oil company response teams.

“We’ll have a working system that watches [the gas wells] in real time, making sure that standards are kept and met,” Crowson said. “If an emergency does happen, my team will be properly prepared to deal with the emergency while we’re waiting for the specialty groups [from gas and oil companies] to respond, which can be eight hours or more.”

Crowson said the program would have a specialized team of firefighters to respond to natural gas well emergencies around the city, including UTA.

Arlington has more than 300 gas wells and UTA has 22 gas wells.

Crowson said the response team would work with Carrizo Oil and Gas Inc., the company that owns the UTA gas wells, if an emergency happened on campus.

Crowson said the fire department responded to 74 gas well emergency-related calls last year in Arlington.

The plan calls for hiring a Preparedness Program manager, a security and safety inspector and six response specialists, as well as training existing firefighters for the program.

Crowson said he expects the program will cost about $800,000, including hiring and training personnel.