Making vehicle emissions cleaner is a priority for a variety of agencies and companies around the globe. One Lansing organization, however, is focused on addressing what they see as the highest priority vehicle emission issue of them all – school bus emissions.
“We feel school districts and school organizations in particular are important because of the impact to young children,” says
Greater Lansing Area Clean Cities Executive Director, Maggie Striz Calnin. “They’re at greater risk for having their health negatively impacted than adults are.”
GLACC will now be able to reduce emissions on 58 area buses thanks to a $725,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The award was made through the EPA’s National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program. The organization will partner with schools in Grand Ledge, Charlotte, Haslett, Waverly Community Schools, as well as for Dean Transportation and Michigan State University on the project.
“We’re really excited,” says Calnin. “We know that school district don’t have a lot of extra funding to do these upgrade, so we saw this as good way to use grant funds to help them make a big impact.”
The estimation of the impact of upgrading 58 local buses is the reduction of the air pollutant nox by 610 tons air particulates by 35 tons, hydrocarbon by 65 tons and carbon by 302 tons over the lifetime of the vehicles.
Work on the vehicles will being in spring of 2012. This program follows GLACC’s recent successful upgrade of 250 local school buses.
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