School district will expand its number of ‘greener’ buses

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — The Garden Grove Unified School District’s fleet of environmentally friendly vehicles continues to enlarge following a grant for the purchase of nine additional school buses powered by compressed natural gas (CNG).

With this latest award by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), the region’s clean air agency, the GGUSD accepted $1.53 million for the new, lower-emission buses. The grant includes $151,524 per bus base price and $14,000 per bus for CNG fueling station infrastructure. The school district will provide $15,000 per bus in matching funds for a total contribution of $135,000.

The 50-passenger buses purchased through the grant are scheduled for delivery this spring and will replace nine older diesel-powered buses that will be taken off the road and scrapped. CNG buses emit no diesel soot, which is the source of approximately 84 percent of all air pollution cancer risk in the Southland.

With this new financial assistance, the district will soon operate 49 CNG-powered buses, 45 percent of its total fleet, which remains the largest inventory of clean-fuel buses among Orange County school districts.

The grant awards by the AQMD provide more than $8.8 million to 11 school districts in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties to remove 56 pre-1987 diesel school buses with greener replacements. The Brea-Olinda Unified School District was the only other grant recipient in Orange County ($1,186,668).

Grant funding for the new school buses is derived from California voter-approved Proposition 1B and the state’s Carl Moyer Program.

The GGUSD acquired its first CNG-powered buses though an AQMD grant in 2001 and currently operates 110 school buses.

– Nguoi Viet 2