Published: January 12, 2009 09:41 am      

Heating costs at jail over budget

ELKHART — The methane equipment that was supposed to help save money by heating the Elkhart County Jail is not working — and it’s costing. Heating expenses were $275,000 more than what county officials had budgeted.

The culprit? Equipment problems.

The intent was to heat the jail, which is located near the county landfill at C.R.s 7 and 26, by tapping into methane produced by garbage in the county landfill.

County Administrator Tom Byers said that nearly 14 months after the jail opened, the methane collection system still has flaws and natural gas remains the heating fuel of choice.

“Sure it’s been frustrating, especially when you have an energy source out there that you can’t use,” said Byers, who’s coordinating efforts to pinpoint the problem.

According to Chief Deputy Auditor Pauline Graff, the county spent approximately $540,000 last year on natural gas to heat the jail, approximately $275,000 more than had originally been budgeted.

“We had budgeted like $263,466 for it, and they got an additional then,” Graff said.

Methane created by decomposing garbage continues to surge out of the Elkhart County Landfill. But because it can’t yet be harnessed, it’s burned off in one of two orange flares visible to motorists on nearby U.S. 20.

Efforts to tap the fuel and burn it to generate steam to heat the jail and the water used in the jail’s kitchen and laundry continue to limp along, hampered by equipment glitches.

But what exactly is wrong isn’t clear.

The heating system had problems processing the methane since the jail opened in November 2007. Jail officials have had to rely on natural gas from NIPSCO instead since then.

That situation has led to fingerpointing among the firms that helped install the system, said Kim Davis, the landfill manager. There’s also exasperation among county leaders.

“It’s not happened as everyone would like. But we’ll get there,” Davis said.

The new jail, built to alleviate overcrowding at the old jail in Goshen, was projected to save $250,000 to $300,000 per year by running on methane from the landfill.

DLZ, the company that designed the new $97 million jail, believes it knows what may get the methane flowing. That repair job, which entails installation of more monitoring instrumentation, has an estimated price tag of $22,500 to $28,000.

Byers, Davis and Jim Miller, head of the Elkhart County Buildings and Grounds Department, think the problem stems from the inability to synchronize and coordinate the equipment used in moving and burning the methane.

The system includes a compressor at the landfill that pumps the gas generated at the site through a three-quarter mile pipeline to a utility building near the jail.

The county spent nearly $1 million on the methane compressor and the pipeline, which feeds the methane to a utility building where its supposed to be burned in two boilers.

The problem seems to be getting that equipment to work together as a single system and properly regulating methane flow.

“It’s all going to be about making the two computers controlling the systems talk to each other and play nicely together,” Davis said.