Alaska Native Business
© Jodi Fondy/Courtesy of the Denali Commission
special section
The Minto Village Council received a START grant which provided officials with the technical knowledge they needed to make their community center, Lakeview Lodge, more energy efficient.
Village START Grants for Energy Efficiency By Julie Stricker
M
into is a small Alaska Native village with a population of about 210 located 125 miles northwest of Fairbanks. The community hub is the twelvethousand-square-foot Lakeview Lodge, where school and senior lunch programs, community meetings, and village council operations are held. 60
In the summer, temperatures in Minto can reach the nineties, and it is not uncommon to see winter temperatures dive to sixty below zero. Village officials struggled to meet the $75,000 annual fuel and electricity costs for the Lakeview Lodge, which was built more than thirty years ago with little attention to energy efficiency.
It’s a problem seen in many other rural Alaska communities, many of which are dealing with outdated facilities built in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, when fuel prices were a fraction of today’s, says Jodi Fondy, program manager for the Denali Commission. Electricity and fuel costs are among the highest in the nation and some village residents say they
Alaska Business Monthly | September 2015 www.akbizmag.com