Apollo Bay P-12 College The young heart of the Apollo Bay Community

Nicola

Our college has been working towards reducing our impact on the environment, but as with all schools, we are hamstrung by a tight budget and lack of political will. We have changed all of our lighting to compact fluoro and LEDs and the new parts have ‘smart lighting’ sensors to ensure empty classrooms are not lit. We also operate 3 water tanks and hope to install one more at some point when we can find the funds!
The biggest challenge for the school is housing the community pool. The heating costs for this are extreme and despite having 99kw of solar panels on the roof, the electricity bill – which we share costs for – do not reflect such a large solar system as they otherwise would, regardless of what we do at the school end.

Our leisure centre is currently a place of evacuation during an emergency/disaster. Having read about the impacts of the Mallacoota fires, my concern was that despite the solar, in a bushfire we would have no sun and therefore no power to assist the hundreds (potentially thousands!) of people who might arrive at this centre. 

Mains water could be compromised for weeks and people with refrigeration/power needs would have nothing. So the most recent endeavour has been to secure a backup power solution – two unsuccessful EMV grant applications later, I came across a DEECA grant to do with ‘energy resilience’ and after much discussion and site visits the Minister has made the announcement that Apollo Bay will be one of the recipients of a stand alone backup power system to link in with the solar.

A big part of this is thanks to the last members of the Apollo Bay Masonic Lodge who donated 100k towards this project to assist the town in being resilience in the face of a disaster. We will be able to shut the pool off from the system in such a scenario and divert all power to the battery/solar to keep power points, toilets and fridges running, both in the leisure centre and the home economics building where we would be able to cook for people should the need arise. Whilst this system isn’t as large as I would like, it is a start that can be build upon, according to the design of the system.

I would encourage all people to consider how they can prepare for the increasing likelihood of disasters – both for themselves and those around them. Not everyone can afford to prepare and also not everyone is willing to face the reality of what that will mean. So it falls on those of us who do, to be the Aesop ant among what feels like a swarm of grasshoppers.