Grant to filter school bus emissions has few takers
Diesel engines expose students to air pollution
By MATTHEW TRESAUGUE
Houston Chronicle (Texas)
November 17, 2008
Only a small fraction of Texas' more than 1,000 school districts have applied for state money designed to help children breathe easier on their daily bus rides until the state's aging school fleet is replaced with cleaner models.
With one month until the deadline, the state has yet to find takers for roughly $5 million of the $14.5 million set aside to equip diesel school buses with sophisticated pollution controls, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is administering the grants.
Environmentalists and parents worry that the lack of applicants could put future funding in danger.
"Free money is a hard thing to turn your nose up at," said Matthew Tejada, executive director of the Galveston Houston Association for Smog Prevention. "If they don't get more subscriptions for it, even if it's the first year, it's only going to be harder to get money the next time."
Texas and other states have made a priority of cleaning up diesel buses in recent years because children are especially vulnerable to the exhaust, which is full of tiny particles that can damage their developing lungs and cause cancer.
Studies have found that the air inside a school bus can be five times dirtier than the air children breathe outside.
Large amounts of diesel soot can accumulate in the cabin from open crankshafts, particularly with older models, which are some of the dirtiest vehicles on the road.
To fix the problem, school districts can replace their fleet or install filters that help reduce emissions from the tailpipe and engine. While the price tag for a new bus ranges from $60,000 to $65,000, the pollution controls generally cost less than $8,000, officials said.
With districts strapped for cash, states including California, New York and Washington have made offers to pay for the retrofits. Texas established a similar program in 2005 but didn't fund it until last year.
Under the program, Texas offers the emissions-control devices at no cost to the districts. The funds are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
So far, about 60 school districts have requested and received grants, accounting for less than 10 percent of the state's 37,000-bus fleet, records show. Most of the participants are in urban areas.
The Houston Independent School District, for one, has successfully applied for the $250,000 maximum in each of the first two funding cycles.
The awards allow the Houston district to close crankcases and install particle traps on nearly 400 buses — a quarter of its fleet.
But 49 of the 60 districts in the eight-county Houston-Galveston region, one of the nation's smoggiest areas, haven't applied for the grants.
The holdouts include the Aldine Independent School District, which operates the third-largest fleet in Harris County.
Mike Keeney, an Aldine schools spokesman, said the district hasn't had the opportunity to look into the grant program while retrofitting more than 600 buses with air conditioning and other improvements.
Other holdouts, including the Fort Bend Independent School District, said they might apply for the money before the Dec. 15 deadline.
State and school officials said one reason for the absence of many districts in the program is timing. They set budgets and maintenance schedules before knowing about the availability of the grants.
What's more, it's difficult for some districts to remove a bus from its route for one to two weeks to be retrofitted during the school year.
To make the process easier, the TCEQ has agreed to pay directly for the installation rather than require districts to submit expenses for reimbursement. The agency also has enlisted the state Parent Teacher Association to help publicize the program.
"We're mostly hearing that they haven't heard about it," said Larry Soward, one of the TCEQ's three commissioners. "We're not hearing that districts don't want to do it."
Soward said he believes there is enough demand for the program that he will ask state lawmakers to fund it above the agency's request of $8 million for the next biennium during the legislative session that starts in January.
"It's a small investment for a very big benefit," Soward said, adding that the agency would seek federal dollars and use money from settlements of alleged violations of clean-air regulations to help finance the programs.
Still, some environmental groups are at a loss as to why so many districts haven't requested grants for clean up their buses.
"There isn't a good reason," said Elena Craft, a Houston-based air quality specialist for the Environmental Defense Fund. "Right now, too many children are sitting in this trap, where every time the door opens, they're exposed to more particulate matter."
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