JACKSON – Superintendent Nicole Pormilli announced the school district will be receiving a grant award during a recent visit to a Jackson Council meeting.
The grant was provided through a state program that originated from litigation. Pormilli credited Council President Andrew Kern “for making us aware of this opportunity in July.”
Pormilli added that the grant will allow the district to replace very old garbage trucks which are rusting away and in need of replacement.
She introduced John Blair, who took the lead in securing the grant, Edward Ostroff, the district’s director of buildings and grounds, and the district’s business administrator, Michelle Richardson.
Blair serves as the school district’s energy education specialist and noted that the grant came about after “Volkswagen got in trouble for misreporting their emission levels on diesel fuel and as a result of that, the state of New Jersey received around $37 million. What the state decided to do is to eliminate as many state operated diesel vehicles as possible. That is the purpose of this grant.
“The grant was for two electric powered garbage trucks to replace our current diesel-powered garbage trucks, one of which is from 1986 so you can imagine how much pollution was being created by this truck, and the other one was from 2006,” Blair added.
“Both of these trucks will eliminate about 25 tons of CO2/greenhouse gases each year. In terms of cost savings, it costs us about $10,500 per year for fuel to run each of these vehicles. That cost will now be only about $500 worth of electricity. Every year these trucks are on the road is a $10,000 cost avoidance.”
The grant was a bit over $1.1 million “so that is a significant cost savings to the district and the charging stations were also included in that grant. This grant is a perfect complement of what we’ve been doing in the school district for the past four years when we started an energy conservation program which has chopped $2.4 million off the budget,” Blair added.
