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Grant to go green
The Vindicator (Youngstown)
Photo
Transportation Director Colleen Murphy stands next to one of 50 Austintown school buses. The district received a grant from the Ohio EPA to retrofit 31 vehicles in its fleet.
More than $6 million has been awarded statewide to improve school buses
By Kristine Gill
AUSTINTOWN
Local school districts have received grants from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to improve school buses.
Austintown schools will retrofit 31 of its 50 buses with a grant for $143,135.
Transportation Director Colleen Murphy said she applied for the grant in the past but was pleased to receive it this year.
“We’re gonna try to green it up around here,” Murphy said.
The grant is part of a statewide effort to improve exhaust systems on older buses. Fourteen other districts have received similar funding through the program this year.
Murphy said the grant process was thorough and required that she price out the cost for new parts and installation involved in the retrofitting. The $143,135 was a price she proposed and the EPA approved. Now Murphy will send out a request for proposals so that mechanics can bid on the project. “There’s enough here to keep my mechanics busy,” Murphy said. “We don’t want to overload them.”
Austintown has four full-time mechanics who maintain the bus fleet as well as machinery including lawn mowers and snowblowers.
Murphy said this project will be completed before 2013 as dictated by the EPA. Murphy said some of the district’s buses are 28 years old. The buses that will be retrofitted are between 10 and 15 years old.
Poland Local Schools, Niles, Weathersfield and Jackson-Milton Schools received money through the grant this summer.
Jackson-Milton schools were awarded an additional $30,021 this month for maintenance equipment for diesel-particulate filters previously installed on 10 of its school buses.
Transportation Coordinator Darlene Pellin said the district earned about $90,000 over the summer from the EPA to install the diesel filters but was told there wasn’t enough money for the accompanying cleaning supplies.
“Now they just wrote to me and said they freed up more money and are funding more projects,” Pellin said, adding that the program is beneficial for both students and the environment.
“We’re trying to improve air quality,” she said. “Children are at greater risk of asthma problems and things these days, and this was a great opportunity to make our community green and help our community and our students.”
According to the EPA, the grant, which has been available since 2006, will cut airborne pollution by more than two tons. More than $6 million has been awarded to improve about 2,000 buses in the state.
EPA spokesperson Heather Lauer said funding for the grants is collected from air-pollution fines paid by companies around the state.
“It’s a great program for actually using money from air pollution to clean up other air pollution,” she said.