ASBO And NAPT Present
Webcast on Emissions Standards

CYBERSPACE — The Association of School Business Officials International and the National Association for Pupil Transportation came together in June during an interactive webcast to discuss new EPA emissions standards and the implications for school bus fleets.

The question of the day being: what must districts do to bring their fleets into compliance for 2007?

“There is nothing you have to do,” said Jennifer Keller, Clean School Bus USA program manager for the EPA. The mandate is on the manufacturers, not the fleets themselves, she explained.

The EPA standard mandates that the petroleum industry manufacture ULSD containing a maximum of 15 ppm of sulfur content down from 500 ppm. All diesel products supplied nationwide from refiners and importers were required to be 80 percent compliant by June 1 and 100 percent compliant by June 1, 2010, with the exception of California, which had to meet the 100 percent criteria by June 1. Additionally, new school buses purchased with model year 2007 engines will meet the new heavy-duty engine standard, making them 10 times cleaner than most 2006 engines.

Although there is no requirement to do so, opportunities do exist for districts to voluntarily clean up their school bus fleets. Keller along with South Carolina Director of Transportation Donald Tudor and David Anderson, director of transportation and fleet operations at Adams 12 Five Start Schools in Colorado, shared several options including retrofitting, bus replacement, idling reduction programs and implementation of good maintenance practices.

“There are a lot of things you can do with a current fleet even if you can’t afford to buy new buses,” Anderson said.

For instance in 2004, Katonah-Lewisboro School District in New York formed an Alternative Fuels Committee comprised of administrators, board of education members, city council members and residents to investigate the use of alternative fuels and emissions control technologies for the school bus fleet, said transportation supervisor Jim Minihan. The district transports 4,300 students daily on 52 large school buses and 43 school bus vans across 1.2 million miles annually.

Funding for school bus fleet projects, said Keller, is available through federal grants and state supplemental environmental projects (SEPs) money as well as local, private and congestion mitigation and air quality (CMAQ) sources. The Katonah-Lewisboro district, which is located in the non-attainment area of Westchester County just north of New York City, received a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to retrofit 46 buses with crankcase filters to reduce emissions inside the vehicles and 11 with diesel oxidation catalysts.

In February 2005, the transportation department participated in an EPA idling study and is currently formalizing a policy to limit excessive idling. And last September the district began purchasing ULSD for the entire school bus fleet and decided to install diesel particulate filters, which will be installed on two large buses the district bought during the 2006-07 school year.

“I think our district is somewhat ahead of the curve, but ... we still have a lot to do,” Minihan said.
Bowling Green School District in Ohio also applied for grant funds and received $126,072 from Toyota’s Clean Buses for Kids program last year. The money was applied to diesel particulate filer retrofits for 17 of the district’s 26 school buses. Installation was done last fall. Additionally, $350 per bus was allocated toward the cost difference between low sulfur diesel and ULSD.

Approximately 1,956 students a day are transported across 372,000 miles per year plus field trip mileage.
“We felt that to make a healthier environment for our students and improving the non-attainment area, this was a good thing to do,” said transportation director Dan Davis.

Source: School Transportation News, August 2006. All rights reserved.