School Bus Transportation News at STN Media

2005 Clean School Bus Awards Announced

TUCSON, Ariz. (updated Feb. 23, 2006) - U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson announced 37 demonstration funding projects in 25 states as part of the $7.5 million 2005 Clean School Bus USA program.

Johnson visited the Tucson Unified School District, Arizona's second largest public school system, which raised an additional $6.5 million to its federal award of $493,003. The district, which runs a fleet of 308 buses to transport 13,000 students on regular route service over 4.7 million miles annually, will use the money in part to purchase 60 new compressed natural gas (CNG) buses.

South Carolina received the largest award, $499,099, to retrofit approximately 197 buses with diesel oxidation catalysts and crankcase filters, to replace up to 12 older diesel school buses, and to conduct a biodiesel pilot and an idle-reduction device pilot. The award was South Carolina's first under the 3-year-old federal program. Meanwhile, Oklahoma's Crutcho School District won the state's first Clean School Bus grant worth $69,730 for the replacement of two 1980s buses, the retrofit of one other and B20 for five other buses in its fleet. Click here for a complete list of 2005 recipients.

TUSD's director of transportation, Bill Ball, said the EPA grant will fund 19 new CNG buses. The district will use an additional $4.5 million appropriated from a recentl school bond election, $200,000 from a U.S. Department of Energy grant and $70,000 from a positive-message school bus advertising program to fund the other purchases. He added that another $2.5 million is available in the district's soft capital budget.

The overall project goal, taken from the district's Web site, is to replace the oldest 131 buses with new buses as soon as financially possible. Currently, TUSD operates five CNG buses, 34 buses using unleaded fuel and 269 diesel buses; 75 of the oldest were retrofitted with oxidation-reduction catalysts from a 2004 Caterpillar private sector grant worth about $75,000.

Though Tucson and surrounding Pima County are federal attainment areas, Tucson was recently ranked 86th on the Asthma and Allergy Foundation's 2006 list of America's "Most Challenging Places to Live with Asthma."

"Asthma is the No. 1 cause of illness in all of Pima County as well as TUSD," Ball said. "We can and we must make our fleet the cleanest it can possibly be."