Iola has fallen behind Chanute and Fort Scott in the race to be the most energy efficient community in southeast Kansas, but Iola’s Take Charge! Challenge team isn’t losing sight of the prize.
The challenge, hosted by The Climate and Energy Project and the Kansas Energy Office, is a competition among 16 cities in the four regions of the state to see which can save the most energy and bring home $100,000 to be used for a renewable energy or energy efficiency project in their city.
But the prize money, provided through the 2008 stimulus bill, isn’t the ultimate prize, said Becky Nilges, Iola’s Take Charge! team leader. It’s the reward of having a community that understands what’s at stake if it doesn’t take the necessary steps to save energy.
“This is a good cause, not only immediately but for the long term,” she said, referring to the need to wean all of society off harmful energy sources.
The contest, which began Jan. 1 and runs through Sept. 30, provided each community involved with $25,000 in seed money to promote the program and facilitate community education, motivation and action.
After somewhat of a slow start, Nilges said the team and its projects has really taken off.
“At first, people were just kind of unsure,” she said. “We went to a lot of groups around town and did a lot of presentations and explaining and that was an opportunity for them to ask a lot of questions. Now a lot of folks have really gotten involved.”
Since the beginning of the program, the Iola Take Charge! team has been involved in a multitude of events spreading the word about energy efficiency, including booths at practically every area event and the trading of compact fluorescent light bulbs to home and business owners for the less energy efficient incandescent bulbs, free of charge.
Through the program people can also get household energy audits, a review and consultation of a home’s energy efficiency, for $100, a $400 discount. Homeowners who take advantage of the discounted energy audit have a professional energy auditor come to their home and inform them of all the potential energy-saving improvements they can make.
“I am so impressed with the energy audit. I ended up with a 40-page booklet of results from that audit,” said City Manager Judith Brigham, who recently had one done at her own home.
The local schools are also chipping in. In addition to plans for a USD 257 enrollment fair as well as eductional assemblies and recycling competitions at the schools in September, Brian Pekarek, the new USD 257 superintendent, is trying to bring energy efficient equipment to the district.
Pekarek, who became superintendent July 1 after two years at the Clifton-Clyde district, the Kansas green district of the year, has applied for a $250,000 grant to retrofit at least 15 of the district’s school buses, which would make the vehicles, and the fumes they emit, more energy efficient and less harmful to people.
If Iola is able to move into first place by Sept. 30, Brigham said the $100,000 prize would be used to make recycling something that’s easy for the community to do. Currently, Iola residents have to travel out of town to recycle anything besides aluminum cans and newspapers.
“If people have a place and there’s access, they will recycle. And that accomplishes two things — it saves resources and it doesn’t fill up our landfill,” she said. “And if you live in town and you have a convenient place to (recycle), you might have more of a tendency to do that. But if you take it to LaHarpe, that’s still wasting fossil fuels.”
Nilges agreed.
“Our community is very interested in recycling but the avenue isn’t there,” she said, adding that with only two weeks’ notice, Iola residents brought “truckloads of plastic bottles and jugs” to the May 21 Hogfest event.
“People know recycling is important and they want to do it,” Nilges said.
Although not set in stone, the city has a fluid plan to spend the potential prize money on recycling trucks, trailers or balers to sort recyclable material to help with recycling accessibility.
City competes for green
