Grant will fund new lighting at Greencastle Fire Dept.

GREENCASTLE -- The Greencastle Fire Department should soon see some serious energy savings after the announcement of Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG) earlier this week.

Lt. Governor Becky Skillman announced the state's award of 58 EECBG grants to 47 Indiana cities, towns and counties. Among these was a $38,370 to Greencastle for building lighting retrofit for the fire department.

The grant will fund the replacement of all interior lighting at the fire station, as well as some exterior lighting.

"The majority of the lighting that we have in the fire station is still the original lighting we had in the fire station in 1978 when it was built," Fire Chief Bill Newgent said. "The bay lighting was replaced approximately 12 years ago, and part of the grant was to replace that lighting and go with more energy efficient lighting for the bay area and throughout the whole department."

The current lighting will be replaced with fluorescent and LED lighting as well as updating all light fixtures throughout the fire station with energy efficient fixtures.

"The other thing they're going to do is install occupancy sensors and additional switching for better lighting control," Newgent said.

The grant should save the city nearly $3,700 per year on energy costs.

Mayor Sue Murray said the grant should add to the sustainability efforts going on citywide.

"It is definitely a part of that. It's obviously a cost savings for us and something that we wouldn't have been able to undertake on our own out of operating funds," Murray said.

The city applied for the grant once before. Although they were denied on the first round, they tried again, undeterred.

"We did reapply and made no modifications in the grant and were awarded the second time, which is wonderful," Murray said. "It will help us do some upgrades at the fire station, which will be really valuable."

Skillman will preside over an award ceremony for all grantees at 10 a.m. June 22 at the State House. Work should begin some time after the ceremony. Newgent said he hopes to have the work complete by fall.

"This is a great grant," Newgent said. "We're having a lot of issues with lighting here at the fire department because the stuff's just so old. We're replacing ballasts and doing all these things to try and limp it through. We were very blessed to get the energy grant to replace these lights."