The Steelville School District has been awarded a “Fuels for Schools” grant totaling $900,000. The grant will provide for the installation of a new woodchip-fired boiler system that will heat the entire downtown campus.

“The district is very excited about this system and its positive impact on the school as well as the opportunity to partner with the community,” Superintendent Nathan Holder said. “Not only is the school system looking at a projected savings of approximately $41,000 each year in heating expenses, but the goal is to purchase the woodchips locally from our community.”  The system will use about 500 tons of chips annually.

The plan is to install a biomass boiler district heating system that will provide reduced life cycle operating costs, reduce the district’s net carbon footprint, utilize a local fuel and positively impact the local economy. The project will be financed by the grant funding with the preliminary project cost estimate totaling $898,251. Project requirements state the new system must be installed and operational by June 15, 2011, so the process will begin right away. Holder reported the district will be forming a local committee to help oversee the project, with the first meeting to be held this month.

The grant was awarded to Steelville, along with six other Missouri schools, as a result of a cooperative effort between the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) and the USDA Forest Service’s State & Private Forestry program. Grant awards to the schools totaled almost $6 million and are being funded through The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

“Fuels for Schools funds will help these schools and school districts install and operate boiler systems that use woody biomass from local public and private forest land to heat and/or cool their facilities,” explained grant administrator John Tuttle, forestry field programs supervisor for the MDC, in a press release issued on Tuesday. “Missourians care about conserving our forests, fish and wildlife. This technology will help these schools reduce dependence on fossil fuels, reduce energy costs, create or retain local jobs and support healthy forests and the state’s forest industry.”

“The Fuels for Schools projects will help create a stronger market for woody material historically considered waste, such as unhealthy or small-diameter trees and wood debris left from logging,” he added. “These forest products currently have little or no commercial value so the Fuels for Schools projects can provide micro-markets for wood chips produced from them.”

Tuttle explained that the projects also will support forest health, a key part of the MDC’s mission, by making it economical to thin overcrowded forest stands and remove diseased and insect-infested trees.

The MDC mailed grant solicitations to public schools in 22 of the state’s most heavily forested counties. Thirteen schools applied and seven were offered the grant.

A multi-agency selection committee reviewed grant applications and selected grant recipients based on economic needs, dependence on the forest products industry, project feasibility and the ability to implement the project quickly, proximity to public and private forestland and partnerships with other public entities that could benefit from the biomass energy system.

Grant recipients and amounts are:

Southern Reynolds County R-II School District: $970,000

Perry County 32 School District: $970,000

Steelville School District (Crawford County): $900,000

Rolla 31 School District Junior High Building (Phelps County): $760,000

Gainesville R-V School District (Ozark County): $970,000

Eminence R-I Elementary (Shannon County): $350,000

Mountain View-Birch Tree Liberty High School (Howell County): $850,000