• FLOODS of '08 VIDEO
Many down town business owners are facing heating bills around 10 thousand dollars.
Alliant's steam plant heats much of downtown but the boilers were damaged during the floods of ’08. To fix the plant permanently would cost millions of dollars. So in the meantime Alliant brought in new temporary boilers to keep their customers warm. The old boilers ran off of coal. The new temporary boilers run off of natural gas. The gas making heating costs much more expensive.
Many down town building owners say It's going to be a really expensive problem to fix. The history center wasn't flooded. So when FEMA came by and asked the director if the museum needed assistance the director said no. Now though he's wishing he applied. The museum now has a monthly nine thousand dollar heating bill. That's just as much as it costs the museum to bring in new exhibits. Something that now may not be able to happen for awhile.
"That may have to be delayed a few months. We just don't know. we have a unique problem here we were not hit by the flood directly but this is an indirect cost for the flood," says Jim White, the museum’s director.
While some CR businesses are suffering because of this problem others are seeing a boom in business. Workers at Colony Heating and cooling say they've been extremely busy with building owners looking to make the switch from steam to gas.
Workers at Colony say the bigger the space the more expensive it is to make the switch. The average cost for a large building or business is about 100 to 150 thousand dollars. Colony says it's expensive but the switch will cut the cost of their heating bills in half.
It's what a lot of building owners are doing right now and that's putting a lot of pressure on those who haven't made the switch because as more switch over the cost for those who don't goes up. Alliant is still charging their existing customers the cost of bringing in and installing those new boilers.Still Steamed
