CenterPoint Energy Operations Supervisor Jerry Almgren presents the Community Safety Grant to Kimball Fire Captain Dave Traurig. Submitted photo.
CenterPoint Energy, Minnesota’s largest natural gas utility, awarded a Community Safety Grant of $2,500 to the Kimball Fire Department to purchase firefighting boots. The new boots will offer firefighters protection against extreme heat, flames, sharp objects, and other hazards that are encountered as -firefighters respond to emergencies. Jerry Almgren, Operations Supervisor at CenterPoint, presented the Community Safety Grant check to the Kimball Fire Chief Dave Traurig.
In Minnesota this year, -CenterPoint awarded more than
50 Community Safety Grants, totaling more than $120,000, to support safety-related equipment and projects. CenterPoint Energy serves more than 920,000 residential and business customers in more than 260 local Minnesota communities.
“At CenterPoint Energy, safety is our first core value and drives our efforts to provide safe and reliable energy to the customers and communities we are privileged to serve,” said Brad Steber, Vice President, Minnesota Gas at -CenterPoint Energy. “Through our Community Safety Grant Program, we support the work our emergency responders, local officials, and many others do to help support the health and safety of our customers across our local Minnesota communities.”
CenterPoint awards grants of up to $2,500 through this program to support local communities in filling funding gaps that may exist in acquiring safety materials. Each community that CenterPoint serves can submit a grant application with information on a safety-related problem, issue, or need in the community, and how a Community Safety Grant could address those needs.
This year, CenterPoint’s Community Safety Grant program awarded more than 90 grants totaling nearly $230,000 in Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, and Texas to fund safety-related equipment and projects in local communities.
Since launching the program in 2003, CenterPoint has funded more than 1,600 safety-related projects, and awarded more than $3.25 million in grants to communities throughout the company’s six-state footprint for their safety initiatives. These grants have enabled communities to install public AEDs, update emergency communication equipment, purchase personal protective equipment for first responders, install traffic control signs, purchase gas monitoring devices, and many other projects.
To learn more about how -CenterPoint is supporting the communities it serves, visit CenterPointEnergy.com/Community.