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- Washington, DC
April 11, 2003
From Capital Reports
WASHINGTON (04/11/03) -- Highlighting the Bush Administration's commitment to reduce environmental health risks to children, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman will announce a new national partnership to minimize pollution from school buses. This new program, Clean School Bus USA, will work toward encouraging policies and practices to eliminate unnecessary school bus idling, installing effective emission control systems on newer buses and replacing the oldest buses in the fleet with newer ones.
"President Bush and I stand firmly behind our commitment to protecting the health of our nations' children," said Administrator Christie Whitman. "Every day in America, 24 million children travel safely to and from school on 444,000 school buses--that's 4 billion miles each year, equivalent of four round-trip visits to the planet Jupiter. That's a lot of driving and a lot of air pollution. Working with our partners as part of the Clean School bus USA program we are poised to meet the challenge to make the bus ride cleaner for those children."
The Clean School Bus USA Partnership will be announced by Administrator Whitman at an event in Philadelphia where 3M has committed a $200,000 donation to Pennsylvania's Clean Air Fund for a pilot project to retrofit school buses to reduce air pollution. EPA has contributed $50,000 to the program under the Voluntary Diesel Retrofit Program Grants.
To financially support this effort to make school buses cleaner, Congress included $5 million in EPA's budget this year for a cost-shared grant program designed to assist school districts in upgrading their bus fleets. An additional $20 million will be available through supplemental environmental projects.
Corning Incorporated and other members of Manufacturers of Emission Control Association are sponsoring a summit in Washington D.C. to highlight this important children's health issue and to identify innovative measures partners can take to help EPA reach its goals of reducing idling, retrofitting existing buses, and replacing the oldest buses with new cleaner buses.
For more information about the Clean School Bus USA program, see: www.epa.gov/cleanschoolbus.
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