Districts largely uninterested in funds for retrofitting buses
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Only one of the 43 school districts in Allegheny County has applied for and received funding from a county program that was created three years ago to help the districts retrofit their diesel school buses to reduce emissions of harmful pollutants.
Deer Lakes, which will receive $15,000 to retrofit 10 of its buses, is the only one that has applied for funding from the Allegheny County Diesel School Bus Retrofit program.
Four school districts, however, including the Pittsburgh Public Schools, North Allegheny, Penn Hills and Plum, have either already retrofitted or are in the process of upgrading their bus fleets through different grant programs.
Funded by a $500,000 grant from the county's Clean Air Fund, the program was created in 2006 in an effort to reduce the amount of fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons in the air, said Tom Lattner, an engineer in the county Health Department's Air Quality Program.
Since then, only Deer Lakes and a few other districts, including Quaker Valley, South Fayette, Baldwin-Whitehall and Montour, have expressed interest in the program. And yet the atmosphere in Allegheny County receives about 12 tons of particulate matter and 367 tons of hydrocarbons emitted from about 2,000 diesel school buses each year.
"It's a shame that we haven't seen a lot of applicants yet," said Mr. Lattner. The county's program, he added, offers to cover at least 75 percent of the costs of retrofitting the buses.
The cost of retrofitting can range from $1,000 to $10,000 per bus for various types of tailpipe retrofits and from $400 to $700 per bus for crankcase filters, which are installed in the hood to reduce pollution from gases that sift into the bus.
"It's frustrating and unfortunate that many of the school districts and bus companies are not taking advantage of this program," said Rachel Filippini, executive director of the Group Against Smog and Pollution.
A leading advocate in the Allegheny County Partnership to Reduce Diesel Pollution, Ms. Filippini's group is working with the Pittsburgh Public Schools to retrofit its bus fleet through funding by the Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. That program will be announced formally at a news conference today.
She said one of the reasons for the lack of interest in the county program maybe because of the county's requirement that all but 11 of the poorest school districts pay a 25 percent match to participate in the program.
"That's why we pulled out of it," said Donna Harshman, director of transportation for South Fayette School District.
"We applied for the diesel oxidation catalyst and the closed crankcase ventilation system for 14 of our buses. The total cost would have been $30,215, but the county offered to fund 75 percent of it and we just can't afford it at the moment," she added.
It seems that many school district officials are unsure about retrofitting their bus fleets because of the costs associated with operating the buses after the retrofit, said Lawrence Korchnak, superintendent of the Baldwin-Whitehall School District.
"We haven't yet made a decision on participating the program because we're not sure that we want to take on the long-term costs of operating retrofitted buses," said Dr. Korchnak.
"The one thing we know is that retrofitting reduces fuel economy and that's why we are looking at the long-term costs associated with this," he said. "We don't want to retrofit these buses and then see the price of gas rise drastically. And that's something I think many school districts are dealing with."
Another reason school districts are hesitant, he added, is because all the 2007 or newer model buses don't need to be retrofitted to curb emissions.
"We replace five buses every year. It might be cheaper for us to replace our fleet over time than try to maintain our old buses at a high cost of gas."
First Published February 17, 2009 12:00 am
