Winter has been expensive for gas customers

It's been a kind of chilly, soggy March — the month is going out like both a lamb and a wet dog — which means that heating bills are still taking a hit along the Wasatch Front.

Jim and Tammy Engebretsen's March Questar bill was $314, down from the $440 high in January but still reflective of both slightly cooler-than-normal temperatures and higher-than-normal natural gas rates. Those rates started the winter 38 percent higher than last year.

On Tuesday, Questar filed for a rate decrease that, if approved by the Public Service Commission, would lower gas bills by 4 percent, effective April 1. That's on top of an 8 percent decrease that took effect in February.

Despite the recent decreases, it's been an expensive winter for Utah's natural gas customers. The Deseret Morning News has been following the Engebretsen family and two other households as they've looked for strategies to keep heating costs down. This is our last peek at their bills.

Calls to the state's 211 info bank number requesting heating assistance this winter and spring were double what they were last year, according to director Joshua Pedersen. The info bank refers callers to programs such as HEAT, for low-income families, and REACH, which helps Utahns who are older than 65 or are disabled, as well as to Catholic Community Services.

Since we last spoke to 72-year-old Elva Amodt, who lives in a mobile home near Redwood Road, she was finally approved for the federal and state-funded HEAT program, which typically provides between $250 and $300 per winter per household that qualifies. In past years, that amount has covered bills for a good portion of the season, but this year many families have used up the money in one or two months.

The good news is that HEAT received a double boost late this winter: an additional $500,000 from the Utah Legislature, and $7.8 million from the federal government. The money will go toward helping 28,500 Utahns with one-time assistance; leftover funds will provide supplemental money for these families, although the amounts haven't been determined yet, says Gordon Walker, director of the state's division of Housing and Community Development. As with all poverty programs, he says, "there's never enough money."

The HEAT program has also provided "heat crisis" assistance to an additional 652 families, to pay for broken furnaces or other heating problems. Walker's department also administers a weatherization program that upgrades windows, furnaces and insulation for low-income Utahns. It's a more long-term solution for people living in older, drafty homes, he says. But in some parts of the state the waiting list is two years, so the division doesn't advertise the program, he says.