CenterPoint awards LLFD community safety grant

CenterPoint Energy, Minnesota’s largest natural gas utility, recently awarded a Community Safety Grant of $2,500 to Long Lake Fire Department to fund CPR and automated external defibrillator, or AED, training for residents in Long Lake, Minnesota and communities served by the department.

Steve Marsh, Home Service Plus Supervisor at CenterPoint, presented the Community Safety Grant check to Scott Spinks, Chief 5/Paramedic at Long Lake Fire Department.

In Minnesota this year, CenterPoint awarded more than 50 Community Safety Grants, totaling over $120,000, to support safety-related equipment and projects. CenterPoint Energy serves more than 920,000 residential and business customers in over 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 Energy’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 Energy has funded more than 1,600 safety-related projects and awarded over $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.