Wednesday’s meeting of the Amador County Technical Advisory Committee, or TAC, included a request by California Shock/Trauma Air Rescue, or CALSTAR, to allow a helicopter air ambulance program at the Westover Field Airport. In a round-table discussion, TAC members reviewed CALSTAR’s application for completeness and potential environmental impacts before recommending it to the planning commission. Any major concern centered on insuring that the Air ambulance and landing area would comply with local hazardous materials guidelines for disposal of waste. Another question arose as to whether the airport was already at capacity and under a different contract than the rest of Martell. The discussion is expected to continue in future meetings. It was agreed that the benefits of having a CALSTAR program are numerous. CALSTAR’s response time to emergency calls is 2 minutes- less than half of the average emergency response time. CALSTAR is a regional, public, non-profit helicopter ambulance.