Oregon gets $500,000 grant to cut school bus pollution.

Byline: Scott Maben The Register-Guard

The Environmental Protection Agency has given Oregon $500,000 to convert school buses to cleaner-burning fuel.

The money is the first major investment in the state to reduce diesel emissions that can damage young lungs.

"Oregon has the dubious honor of having the third-oldest school bus fleet in the country," said Kevin Downing, air quality planner with the state Department of Environmental Quality.

"We hope to be able to reduce the emission impacts from these buses, some of which have been on the road since the early 1970s, before the EPA had even established emission standards for diesel engines," Downing said Wednesday.

The federal grant will be administered by the Lane Regional Air Pollution Authority in Springfield and will be used to upgrade buses from Eugene to Portland and from Astoria to Bend.

The local agency and the DEQ will select which public and private school fleets will take part in the project, funded now through the end of 2005.

LRAPA had proposed putting particulate filters on 42 school buses, at a cost of $7,000 each, to cut diesel emissions by 95 percent. Diesel fumes are a leading cause of respiratory problems, including asthma.

Newer technology may allow grant administrators to install filters on many more buses, Downing said.

An additional $200,000 will help schools buy ultralow-sulfur diesel, a cleaner grade of fuel that costs about 18 cents a gallon more than standard diesel in Oregon. The federal subsidy will knock 5 cents a gallon off the cost of an estimated 4 million gallons of fuel next school year.

Low demand for the cleaner diesel has kept it largely unavailable in Oregon and too expensive for school districts to have shipped down from refineries in Washington.

The DEQ is negotiating with oil companies on a plan to bring ultralow-sulfur diesel into the Portland distribution system this fall, Downing said.

Washington state is far more aggressive than Oregon in taking pollution-belching school buses off the road. Washington dedicates $5 million a year in state money to fitting public school buses with exhaust controls and has upgraded more than half of its 9,000 buses so far.

In Oregon, the Beaverton School District has added diesel exhaust filters to 13 of its 239 buses, and the private Catlin Gabel School in Portland switched to ultralow-sulfur diesel last fall for 10 buses used for field trips.