PARIS — By this time next year, the employees, lawyers, judges and defendants in the historic Oxford County courthouse will be warmed by wood pellets, rather than by fossil fuel.

Word was been received from U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe that the county is one of four in the state that will receive a federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant. Oxford County’s share of the $1,474,300 award is $234,800.

David Kyle of Norway, engineer for the project, said the courthouse boilers will be retrofitted to burn wood pellets, a fuel that is manufactured in Maine. Along with the new fuel will come a modernization of how the heat is distributed, he said. The courthouse will also have new high efficiency florescent lights.

Other county buildings will also share in some of the federal money.

Although the furnace at the county Regional Communications Center will continue to burn oil, the heating system will be made more efficient in heat production and distribution, Kyle said.

For county Administrator Carole Fulton, who wrote the grant, receipt of the federal funding is a nice way to retire from the position she has held for 27 years.

“We were very fortunate,” she said Monday afternoon. Her last day on the job is Thursday.

Other counties receiving funding are Cumberland, $606,400; Kennebec, $417,000; and Somerset, $216,100.

According to the statement from the two Republican senators from Maine, the funding was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy and is being distributed to Maine through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Former Bethel Town Manager Scott Cole takes over as county administrator at the first of the new year.

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