Gales Ferry Schools Eyed For Natural Gas

The Ledyard Board of Education is proposing to convert three schools in Gales Ferry from oil heat to natural gas, a switch it believes will save $65,000 a year and pay for itself in three years or less.

Board of Education Business Manager Bill Merrill said the estimates are based on a price of $3 per gallon for heating oil, a cost that is unstable at best and is likely to increase.

Natural gas, he said, does not need to be imported from the Middle East. It burns cleaner than oil and does not require the use of underground storage tanks.

Merrill said gas lines run along Route 12 north at least as far at St. David’s Episcopal Church before veering off across the river toward Mohegan Sun. He knows that, he said, because St. David’s, where he is a member, recently completed an addition, which it heats with natural gas.

That is where he got the idea, he said.

The three schools are Gales Ferry School, Juliet W. Long School and Ledyard Middle School. Merrill said Yankee Gas would pay for the lines from Route 12 into the schools. The town would need to purchase and install new burners.

“We wouldn’t need new boilers,” Merrill said. “Just the burners.”

The cost for the project is estimated at around $192,500. It would be included in the capital improvements requested by the school board, which now include $325,000 for new bleachers at the high school, plus another $100,000 for other capital improvements.

Merrill said large deposits of natural gas recently were discovered in Pennsylvania, suggesting that the price would not fluctuate as oil has. He added that oil tanks are known to leak and must be replaced periodically at considerable expense. 

Above all, he said, natural gas cheaper and less harmful to the environment than oil.

Although the project was not included in the initial budget proposal presented last week by Mayor Fred B. Allyn Jr., Merrill said he hoped members of the Town Council would see the value of the project and put it back in the budget.

“We’ve been looking at this for a while,” Merrill said. “It actually a pretty small amount in the context of a $49.5 million budget.”