Thanks to the efforts of a Mid-Michigan transportation consortium, the Grand Ledge School System expects to get six new buses and Dean Transportation plans to retrofit 405 public school buses with fuel-cleaning scrubbers.
The consortium, Greater Lansing Area Clean Cities (GLACC), won $1.1 million for the bus-emission-reduction project in a U. S. Environmental Agency 
(EPA) competition to award $300 million in recovery funds nation-wide.
The Dean buses will be fit with diesel oxidation catalysts (DOCs), metal units about the size of a small trunk. They can reduce the amount of particulate matter emitted by normal school buses by approximately 20 percent, hydrocarbons by approximately 50 percent and carbon monoxide by approximately 40 percent, according to GLACC.
Kellie Dean, president of Dean Transportation, says he anticipates the need to hire technicians to help with the installation and maintenance of the DOCs. But he is most pleased about the cleaner air he anticipates his 20,000 passengers will breathe, half of whom are children with special needs.
Steve Marquardt, manager of the EPA’s diesel initiative in the Midwest, says the GLACC project, one of 12 selected out of 81 grant applications, stood out because of the partnerships represented and the jobs that would be created.
Bids will be taken for purchase of the DOCs.
“You can be sure we will be looking for a Michigan company to provide them,” says Rachel Kuntsch, GLACC director.
Source: Rachel Kuntsch, Greater Lansing Area Cities
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
Photographs © Dave Trumpie
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