Amid all the recent negative press about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) ramp-up of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), we wanted to take a look at the part of the story that is missing. Weatherization is a cost-effective way to make people’s homes healthier, more efficient, and more valuable, while at the same time providing jobs to hard-working Americans. Talking to folks of every political stripe, we hear universal praise of the WAP’s benefits to the individual and the economy as a whole. So although it has taken time to fully implement the WAP ramp-up, in the long run the country will benefit. Working with the National Association for State Community Services Programs, the State & Local Energy Report has spoken with two people who have benefited from the program: Dan in Colorado, who—although skeptical of government spending in general—has seen a significant improvement in his quality of life since having his home weatherized and now praises the program and its benefits; and Terry Sturgill in Ironton, Ohio, who after nineteen years of working in factories and fabrication shops, found himself unemployed because of the recession. Through an WAP-funded training program, Terry became a certified furnace technician and is now working for the WAP.
The National Association for State Community Services Programs (NASCSP) is a professional membership organization for the state and territorial administrators of the Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and the Department of Health and Human Services Community Services Block Grant (CSBG).
Aware of recent media criticism of the WAP in regards to the perceived slow implementation of funds provided by the ARRA, NASCSP is committed to promoting the value of the WAP in terms of its successes: long-term energy savings to more than 6 million low-income households, reducing carbon emissions and dependence on foreign oil, spurring local economies, and being a pivotal player in the development of state-of-the-art residential energy efficiency technology.
Bob Scott, NASCSP’s Director of Weatherization Services, says, “The Weatherization Assistance Program has been arguably the single major contributor to residential energy efficiency technology by developing and practicing the state-of-the-art methods that the newly emerging green retrofit industry is adopting.”
Scott is concerned that the general public, as well as critics of the program, do not understand the thoroughness of the program’s approach to weatherizing a home. “WAP has evolved to incorporate sophisticated analysis of the energy needs of a home, high tech diagnostic tools and installation techniques, and extensive training of workers to be a program with effective results and real energy savings. Once a skeptic actually visits a Weatherization Program job site and sees the whole house approach, the diagnostic testing, the advanced techniques, and effective measures, they are very impressed and inevitably ask ‘How can I get this done on my house?’”
Dan at his recently weatherized home in Colorado. Photo by Landon Finch
We caught up with Dan on Tax Day at a rally for the Tea Party movement. He is a conservative, suspicious of government spending, and a proud weatherization recipient. Dan extolled the virtues of the WAP as both a jobs program and one that helps real people. The father of three children and the grandfather of twelve, Dan is the type of upstanding man who is the foundation of American communities. He takes pride in saying that he’s always paid his taxes, given to charities, attended church, and extended a helping hand to those in need. After a lifetime of hard work, he and his wife purchased a half dozen condominiums and rented them out, planning to live off the proceeds of the rentals. All of that changed when the economy collapsed.
“We were doing great,” he said. “Then everything went bad.”
Seemingly overnight, Dan and his wife’s life changed. All of their retirement plans were thrown into turmoil.
“I had to give all of the condos back to the bank,” Dan lamented. “We lost everything except our place in Colorado Springs.”
Without the income from their rental properties, Dan and his wife, both cancer survivors, reside in their Colorado Springs home, a 1,600 square foot tri-level built in 1969. They are supported by Social Security and disability payments.
Dan spoke to a representative at the Energy Resource Center in downtown Colorado Springs to inquire about the WAP, and soon learned that he and his wife qualified for the program. Upon inspecting the house, crews found high carbon monoxide levels coming from the furnace. Because the safety concerns couldn’t be repaired, Dan received a new high-efficiency furnace. In addition, Dan received a new, more efficient refrigerator, and crews installed attic and perimeter insulation.
“They’re fantastic people,” said Dan. “Really. I just can’t say enough about the guys.”
After weatherization, Dan estimates that he and his wife are saving $70 a month on their gas bill.
“And we’re saving on our electric and water bills too,” he added.
“If our furnace, which was 40 years old, gave up the ghost, it probably would have cost me a couple thousand dollars, and I don’t know what I would have done. Now I don’t have to worry about my furnace, I don’t have to worry about my fridge, and I don’t have to worry about my insulation. I’m a very happy man.”
Terry Sturgill on a job site in Ironton, Ohio. Photo by Colin McGuire
Terry Sturgill has a long history of working with his hands and working hard. His father taught him the value of both, and he always required that Terry chip in and fulfill his chores around the house as a boy. Terry was good with his hands and at a young age showed aptitude for mechanical thinking. He learned carpentry, and throughout his adult life Terry has helped friends and family build and repair their homes in his spare time. In high school, Terry learned to repair air-conditioning units, and after graduation he enlisted in the U.S. Army, proudly serving six years.
Afterward, Terry worked for fifteen years in a factory and then for four years in a fabrication shop, but when the economy collapsed and the recession strangled the state of Ohio, further crippling the economy in rural Appalachian Ironton-Lawrence County where Terry lives, the shop lost a lot of its business and was forced to make significant cuts to its staff.
Terry was one of those who lost his job. “They had to let me go,” he said. “I don’t have hard feelings. They had no choice.”
With unemployment on the rise and the state of Ohio struggling to create job opportunities for Terry and people like him, Terry sought work to no avail. Then he came across an opportunity in the local newspaper to receive HVAC training at the Ohio Weatherization Training Center at the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development (COAD), a nonprofit community-based organization serving the rural, mostly Appalachian counties in eastern and southern Ohio. He jumped at it.
“I was down on my luck,” he said. “I was feeling bad. But the schooling helped me out a lot. Its been great, a rebirth of sorts.”
Hired under ARRA last July by the Ironton-Lawrence County Area Community Action Organization (CAO), Terry now works as a Furnace Technician for CAO’s Home Weatherization Assistance Program. Approaching his one-year anniversary on the job, Terry is proud of the work he does and quick to say how much the training COAD provided has done for him.
“I’d like to take more classes, too,” he said. “And I tell people all the time to get on the opportunities for any schooling they offer. There are jobs out there in this green economy. You just got to know what you’re doing.”
Terry enjoys his work as a heating technician, and he has a good time with his coworkers, both those who are veterans on the job and those who are new to the field like him. He takes great pride in the responsibilities that come with his work, and he looks forward to each morning to helping people save money.
Terry noted that a lot of the systems he worked on were old and inefficient, and many were dangerous to operate because of cracked heat exchangers that produce carbon monoxide. The COAD HVAC training focuses on comprehensive approaches to both the safety and efficiency of heating systems.
“I’ve been down on my luck before,” he said. “So I enjoy helping people who are down on theirs. That’s the way it should be. People helping each other out. Believe me, I know what those extra dollars you can save can mean.”