U.S. Rep. Richard Neal joined Mayor Domenic Sarno and Superintendent Sonia Dinnall to announce a federal grant for zero-emission school buses during a Jan. 28 press conference.
Reminder Publishing photo by Ryan Feyre
SPRINGFIELD — U.S. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Springfield) joined Mayor Domenic Sarno and Superintendent Sonia Dinnall on Jan. 28 to announce a federal grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that initiates bus electrification for Springfield Public Schools.
The grant, which amounts to just over $6.6 million, will replace 25 heavy duty school buses with zero-emission buses “to reduce pollutants that can be harmful to students and the community.” According to the announcement from the EPA, Hampden County is identified as an EPA-disadvantaged community, so the city is seeking to address the “air toxics concern of a high ambient diesel particulate matter concentration.”
Springfield is one of five applicants in the state selected to receive this type of grant funding through EPA’s Clean Heavy-Duty Vehicles Grant program, which was created by former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Aside from inserting zero-emission school buses into the fleet, the grant will also support the creation of clean vehicle infrastructure, like charging stations, as well as job training for workers to deploy new zero-emission technologies, according to the mayor’s office, and the city will partner with First Student Inc. to use the funding to replace internal combustion engine Class 7 vehicles with the electric vehicles.
“I’m quite proud of the fact that the funding here comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, which was written in the Ways and Means Committee when I was chairman, and now the benefits are beginning to inure to the people of America,” Neal said at a press conference inside Springfield City Hall. “This investment we made in clean technology is really important.”
However, just a few hours prior to Neal’s press conference, the White House announced it was pausing federal grants and loans so President Donald Trump could begin reviewing whether all funding complies with his executive orders, causing confusion and chaos locally and across the country over crucial money used for housing, neighborhood projects, education and environmental purposes.
According to State House News Service, at the time of Trump’s order, it was not clear how much money headed to Massachusetts would be affected, or how long the “temporary pause” might last.
Things changed, however, in the ensuing hours.
Later during the day of Jan. 28, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to freeze existing federal funding just minutes before the freeze was supposed to take into effect. The White House then decided to rescind the memo regarding the freeze the day after that ruling.
In his remarks at the press conference, Sarno said that the new EPA grant would ease some of the city’s budget around school buses while simultaneously creating a greener footprint.
“This will help fit a number of buses, and it’s going to help us move forward in not only transporting our students to and from school, but [it will] also bring a green footprint,” Sarno said at the press conference. “I’m deeply appreciative of Congressman Neal’s continued efforts on that.”
The announcement of this grant came a week after the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District experienced a two-hour delay after four electric buses caught fire in the early hours of Jan. 21 inside the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative Bus Garage at 2045 Boston Rd.
As of press time, Wilbraham Fire Chief Michael Andrews said the fires did not appear suspicious and they were still under investigation.
When asked about concerns people have for electric buses after what happened in Wilbraham, Sarno said he could not comment on that situation because he did not know what specifically occurred.
He did, however, say that the PVTA has several electric buses, and the city has had “no issues whatsoever” with those.
“PVTA has been running electric buses for a number of years,” Sarno said. “We have had no issues at all with PVTA electric buses.”
As a former science teacher, Dinnall said she is “thrilled” to see that the electric cars she was teaching students about many years ago are now front and center in the fight for reducing the carbon footprint.
“Not only are we leaving a beautiful country and world for our students to live in as we educate them about their responsibility to the environment … this type of grant allows us to make it very real to them,” Dinnall said.
