The bus stops here

Urge the AQMD to ban diesel-fueled school buses

From Chapter reports
April 2001

In September, the Southern Sierran reported on the movement afoot to clean up school buses, thousands of which run on dirty, deadly diesel fuel. The issue is expected to come to a head this month when the region’s authority over air quality issues, the Air Quality Management District, votes on a proposal to require that new school buses be powered by the cleanest fuels available. The proposal, supported by Sierra Club and a long list of environmental and public-health advocates, would cover school districts in Los Angeles and Orange counties and portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“Diesel buses are nasty, and it makes the air dirty and not good to breath [sic],” wrote one 13-year-old student at Palms Middle School on a postcard to the AQMD.

That comment and many others were generated by Club efforts to educate students and involve parents on the matter of diesel exhaust. “I want clean air for our kids,” said Helen Shiri, a Club volunteer who designed a presentation for students about diesel school buses. “Children should be informed about how they’re put at risk by pollution, and I believe they can make a difference in protecting the environment.”

Diesel exhaust has been identified as the most significant source of air toxics in California, responsible for over 70 percent of the cancer risk attributed to breathing the air in our region. Children are among those most susceptible to the health effects of diesel exhaust.

What’s more, a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Coalition for Clean Air found that children may be exposed to as much as four times the level of diesel exhaust inside a school bus as outside that same bus. (The report is available online at www.nrdc.org or www.coalitionforcleanair.org.)

Unfortunately, Sierra Club and other environmentalists haven’t been the only ones speaking to school district and AQMD officials in the last few months. A firm calling itself the South Coast Clean Air Partnership, principally funded by the petroleum industry, including the Western States Petroleum Association, BP Amoco and International Truck, has unleashed a greenwashing campaign to push an unproven and toxic product misleadingly hyped as “green diesel.” Its efforts to lobby legislators and school officials has spread misinformation about the cost of switching to cleaner buses. Environmentalists and AQMD officials have worked to identify funding sources for new buses, and the current proposal ensures that no school district need make a financial choice between books and cleaner air.

There are now more than 2,600 natural gas and propane school buses being used around the country—with excellent results. Transit agencies in our region are now required to buy only new alternative-fuel transit buses, because they are the cleanest buses available today. Sierra Club wants our children to get the same consideration.

You can help. Send a letter before April 19 urging the AQMD to get the diesel industry out of our kids’ lungs. Send letters to AQMD Chairman William Burke, c/o Barry Wallerstein, Executive Officer, at this address:

21865 E. Copley Drive
Diamond Bar, CA 91765
Fax: 909-396-3340
Email: bwallerstein@aqmd.gov