Eureka, Montana schools secure financing for heat system

After nearly three years of trying, the Eureka School District will get a central heating plant fired by wood biomass, a renewable source of energy.

An attempt was made to include the system as part of the new high school, but funding never materialized.

Now the district has the $1.3 million identified in loans and grants.
Three weeks ago the district secured a $400,000 federal grant through the Forest Service.

By Steve Newman
Of the Tobacco Valley NEWS

Last week approval of another $300,000 in federal money was announced.
And the remainder, approximately $620,000, is all but guaranteed through a low interest state loan, Superintendent Gary Blaz told school trustees last week.
"It’s all coming together nicely," he said.

The central heating plant, fired by wood fiber, will heat three school buildings that each have their own heating systems.

The elementary school’s steam boiler was built in 1921, the middle schools’ in the 1950s. The high school now uses water boilers fired by propane.

With the biomass plant providing the main source of heat, the district for the first time will have a back-up source of heating for each building, and the life of those older boilers will be extended.

The new boiler will be housed in a separate building about the size of a large garage. It’s likely location is somewhere near the old modular building that housed computer classes. Sold to the Frenchtown school district, the modular was ready to be hauled out by Friday. Underground pipes will distribute heat to the three buildings.

The district anticipates a January bidding for construction, with the biomass plant in operation for the following school year beginning the fall of 2007.

In the meantime, district personnel will tour other schools with similar heating plants. There are at least four in western Montana, and the new Kalispell high school will also use biomass, Blaz said.

That much use creates an economic opportunity, which is part of the intent of the Forest Service grant.

According to Angela Farr, the Fuels to Schools http://www.fuelsforschools.org/ coordinator with the Department of Natural Resources, Montana’s program is specifically tailored to use forest material, such as slash piles, that otherwise would not be used.

Montana’s efficient mills already process materials fully, Farr said. "So we’re trying to utilize slash piles that normally would be burned in open air," she said. That way, slash material is used and smoke reduced.

With the work going on in the area, Eureka is a good fit for the Montana’s program, which is funded through a blcok grant as part of the national fire policy.
"Eureka did an excellent job in its application," Farr said.

And because Eureka’s biomass heating will come from wood chips, so the opportunity is there for someone to fill that need, Blaz said.

"In Lincoln County, it’s a perfect fit," he said. "If someone had a chipper, there’s an opportunity for someone in the valley."

Should a market develop for some specialized wood pellet for a manufacturer like the Eureka Pellet Mill, the district could convert to pellet fuel, Blaz said.

While the Fuels to Schools grant through the Forest Service develops markets for burning materials that clean up forest debris, the school is keen on cost savings, particularly in fuel.

Those savings won’t be evident immediately, but what the district can do is project with precision how much to budget in heating costs.

That’s because the third source of funding, the low-interest state loan, caps the amount the district spends on fuel at the current figure of $150,000 in each of the next 10 years, the term of the loan.

With only 15 percent of its combined general fund allocated to expenses other than salary, Blaz said the district hasn’t had much flexibility in budgeting. "Every year you panic over how high the fuel bill is going to be and how cold it’s going to be," Blaz said. Dramatically rising fuel costs add to the difficulty.

"We now have the chance to budget ($150,000) on heating instead of dealing with volatile pricing going up and down," Blaz said. "So this is huge on the impact down the road five or six years,"

Over the next 10 years the district should see between $100,000 and $150,000 in savings on fuel, he said.

According to Tracy McIntyre, who wrote the grant, the district could save as much as $5 million over a 30 year period.

Obtained through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, the grant is awarded to Lincoln Electric through a program that works with rural cooperatives.
Lincoln Electric will loan the full $300,000 to the school district, which will repay it in installments.

Once repaid, the grant money becomes a revolving fund to benefit economic development in the Tobacco Valley.

Lincoln Electric and InterBel Telephone are each contributing $30,000.

Full Story: