Victor High School celebrates new biomass boiler

In years past, a few classrooms in Victor High School didn’t warm up in the winter.

The English room was always cold, according to senior Amanda Sabo, so the school used little space heaters that didn’t work very well.

By GREG LEMON Staff Reporter

http://www.ravallinews.com/articles/2004/11/24/news/news03.txt

All that changed this fall when Victor became the second town in the Bitterroot Valley, and in the Rocky Mountain West, to heat its schools with a biomass boiler.

"It’s really nice," Sabo said. "Our school’s a lot warmer now."

The boiler was celebrated Tuesday in a lunch-time ribbon-cutting ceremony at Victor High School cafeteria.

"It’s a welcome addition to our community," said Superintendent Orville Getz.

Funding for the boiler came from the "Fuels for Schools" program under the State and Private Forestry branch of the Forest Service. The program was initiated to help rural schools reduce fuel costs, said Larry Anderson, who attended the celebration as a representative from Sen. Conrad Burns’ office.

Anderson also announced that an additional $1.5 million was just approved for the Montana Fuels for Schools program.

Victor’s biomass boiler cost about $625,000 with more than half the cost coming from federal grants. The majority of the remaining funds came through a grant from the Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation and from money raised by the Victor School Foundation.

Darby Schools built a similar biomass boiler last year, which saved them nearly $40,000 in fuel costs. Their old boilers operated on fuel oil which was substantially more expensive to buy than the wood chips burned by the biomass boiler.

Victor’s old boiler ran on natural gas, and because of rising gas prices, it was increasingly expensive to operate.

The Darby system is bigger, more automated and more expensive than the Victor boiler, according to Nan Christianson of the Bitterroot National Forest, and cost about $850,000.

Christianson spoke at the ceremony about the cooperative nature of the project. Federal, state, local governments had to work together with private businesses and foundations to get the boiler built, she said, which says a lot about the spirit of the project.

"To me that’s one of the coolest and longest-lasting outcomes," Christianson said. "It expands the capacity of what a community can do."

It’s hard to tell right now how much the school will save with the new boiler, which has only been operating about a month and still is experiencing some minor problems. Right now it is burning about one ton of wood chips a day, said Tom Coston, director of Fuels for Schools program for the Northern Region.

Last year, when winter was at its coldest, Darby burned nearly four tons a day, he said.

Stanley Krueger, a local private forester who provides the chips for both Darby and Victor, has been involved in both projects from the beginning. The trailer in which he delivers the wood chips carries about 15 tons of material which costs the schools about $375. The new boiler stands to save Victor schools quite a bit of money, he said.

"You gotta dream big," Krueger said. "Because this was a dream that actually came true."