Three Clark County school districts have won nearly $600,000 in new grants from the Washington state education office to make energy efficiency upgrades.
Camas, Hockinson and Green Mountain were among 59 school districts to split $16.7 million in the grants, from 81 districts that applied.
Eligible projects must be finished by June 2011. They required matching district money, an energy audit to measure expected benefits and a local utility conservation incentive, which will leverage the $16.7 million in awards to about $43.3 million worth of combined improvements.
The state estimates the combined projects will produce $2.1 million in annual energy cost savings for the school districts.
Camas, which receives $334,021, will use about $200,000 in district funds and $33,300 in utility incentives to make heating/cooling and systems control upgrades at Skyridge Middle School, Dorothy Fox and Lacamas Heights elementary schools, and the J.D. Zellerbach administration complex.
The district also will improve lighting at the Dorothy Fox and Camas High School gyms.
Hockinson will put its $240,000 state grant toward about $730,000 in planned improvements at all four of its school buildings. It will retrofit lighting, indoors and outside, at all campuses, install a new heat pump and control system at its intermediate school, and replace plumbing at the intermediate and primary schools.
Officials expect to reap $111,700 in utility incentives.
Green Mountain will overhaul outdated and poor lighting at its lone, 135-student building with a $18,000 project that uses $5,550 in state grant money.
Howard Buck: 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com.
