The U.S. EPA awarded Kevin Mallory of Portland Public Schools with its Lifetime Achievement Award for reducing school-bus emissions over the past decade.
Mallory was nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award by Maine Clean Communities, a coalition of fleet managers, state and local officials, clean fuel providers and other alt-fuel advocates. He joined Portland Public Schools in 1996. Prior to that, he worked in transportation logistics for a New England trucking company as a clerk. He climbed the ranks all the way to director of over-the-road operations, and then became director of operations and maintenance for a local paratransit operator, where he first became interested in alternative fuels.
“We took an old Ford V-8 on one of the small buses and converted it to propane,” he told STN recently. “I left and came to the Portland Schools in 1996 before all the data was in. I do know it ran for seven or eight years after the conversion, and it was eight years old at the time.”
In 2001, Portland Public Schools was also the first school district in Maine to establish and enforce a no-idling policy for school buses. The ban was expanded to include private vehicles around school buildings. The district worked with the city to designate Portland as a “Clean Air Zone” and to extend the reduced-idling policies beyond the schools. Three years later, the district was one of the first in the entire country to retrofit its buses with pollution control equipment provided by the EPA. In 2006, Portland replaced three diesel buses with buses running on compressed natural gas (CNG) that were purchased with money from a Clean Cities grant. The district has replaced seven additional diesel buses with cleaner-burning CNG buses purchased with assistance from Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) grants.
Mallory said the DEP, under the leadership of Lynn Catling, the mobile source chief, has “kept us in the dough, so to speak” with grant money. At this writing, the district had a total fleet of 24 school buses and six vans. By the end of the summer, he said 13 of the buses will be powered by CNG, which will finally get the district over the 50-percent, alt-fuel threshhold. The plan, Mallory added, is to make the fleet 100-percent alternative fuels within the next five years. Already, Portland Public Schools is considered to have the largest fleet of CNG school buses in New England.
“We didn’t start this program to save money, and we didn’t start it to be trend setter. We started it because 700 kids in the Portland Schools had active asthma in 2002,” Mallory said. “We did it to improve air quality around schools, and around and inside the buses. In that regard, we did what we set out to do. The kids are better off.”
For the past five years, the district has also used a blend of biodiesel and ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel in its diesel buses.
“Kevin Mallory has been a leader in Maine and the country in addressing the problem of diesel emissions,” added Portland Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk. “His efforts have helped the Portland Public Schools create a healthier environment for our students and staff. The district’s bus fleet reflects our commitment to create a ‘green’ school district.”
