This time last year ENSTAR was installing a new line underneath Funny River, paving the way for landowners along the western side of the community to connect to natural gas.
Bird: “I’ve lived out Funny River for 56 years and the best thing that’s happened to us is getting natural gas.”
Pat Bird of Bird Homestead Golf Course says she used to spend $600 per month on heating oil for a 40 x 60 foot shop and inside apartment…
Bird: “I think I’m saving about $300 a month.”
The Birds connected the 9 lots they own in Funny River, though only one is actively using natural gas.
Bird: “The Borough has the thing where you can pay it over 10 years and that’s what we are doing, because we couldn’t have done it, and had we not signed up, it could have stopped everybody from getting it.”
The Borough requires that 70% of the region’s landowners agree to a project for it to be approved as a Utilities Special Assessment District. Every landowner in the district was required to pay $3,500 to cover the cost of the extension, whether they eventually connect to natural gas or not. The connection fee, paid to ENSTAR, is on average $1,500 per meter.
The project installed 38,500 feet of 2″ pipe at a total cost of $912,580.
ENSTAR’s Kelsie Anderson says 34 meters were set in the western portion of Funny River last year. The eastern end of the community is still without natural gas…
Anderson: “Right now, the east portion is still in the Borough process for LID approval, and that’s just a matter of whether the homeowners decide they want to go forward with it. ENSTAR doesn’t have anything to do with that process other than providing them an estimate of the work.”
ENSTAR has been progressively adding Kenai Peninsula communities to their network. Anchor Point residents were connected in 2012, Homer city residents in 2013, the Homer Spit and Funny River west in 2014. This year the utility has been installing a new line from CINGSA in Kenai to customers in Anchorage.