I’m at a house in north Springfield where the Ozarks Community Action Corporation is performing weatherization. The crew leader, Jeff Strickland, is tapping on the windows.
“You can hear the difference in that: that’s a tight piece of glass,” he said, tapping one pane, “and that’s loose. So, we know that this one, this bottom one, we need to either re-glaze it on the outside or — this one’s not too bad, so what we’ll probably do is just caulk on the inside to help seal that up a little bit.”
OACAC, as it’s known, administers many federal services, including the federal Weatherization Assistance Program. Authorized by Congress in 1976, the program was intended to address the ongoing oil crisis by helping qualifying Americans weatherize their homes at no cost. The need to conserve energy is even higher now than it was back then. As global temperatures rise, keeping your home air-conditioned is going to put more of a strain on the power grid but also on your wallet…