EDITOR: In the coming weeks, The Hollings Cartaway Foundation
shall commence sponsoring a weekly quarter page public service
advertisement in the local press. Our aim is to inform the public
of vital issues affecting South Valley citizens.
EDITOR:
In the coming weeks, The Hollings Cartaway Foundation shall commence sponsoring a weekly quarter page public service advertisement in the local press. Our aim is to inform the public of vital issues affecting South Valley citizens.
Our inaugural article will deal with school bus interior air quality safety issues contained in the two web based safety reports listed below:
http://www.alaw.org/pdfs/breathing_newsletters/2003_march_17/diesel_paper_2003.pdf
http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/nr101503.htm
The American Lung Association, The California Air Resources Board, state and federal EPA, The Journal of The American Medical Association and many others, all concur, and our own very recent research confirms, that Morgan Hill School District buses, and especially the older models, are injuring the health of area kids.
It appears that your school buses pose this area’s most serious public health crisis for youngsters, particularly those suffering from asthma, allergies or other respiratory ailments.
Because of the need to correct this situation immediately, and in consideration of our state’s current financial dilemma, I will be proposing a public/private financial partnership to you and district elected leaders at an upcoming board meeting.
You may be familiar with my foundation’s other recent work in this area, concerning the regulation and required conformance we created to oversee radiation levels from broadcast transmitters.
That unprecedented initiative arose from Gilroy’s largest petition movement that we started two years ago. The end result was the creation of a new comprehensive health, safety, and aesthetic ordinance for the City of Gilroy, and the removal of all unregulated transmitters from Gilroy School District’s school sites.
This health crisis in Morgan Hill is particularly pronounced, owing to the school bus fleet’s average age and the lack of any inclusion of alternative fuel or clean environmental vehicles. All other local school districts in this region maintain a qualitatively superior school bus fleet in comparison to MHD.
Morgan Hill School District buses are not only inordinately polluting the atmosphere and the air that all South Valley residents must breath, but they are also injuring their riders (students).
This crisis should be met head on in and it warrants a multi-part strategy that minimizes health dangers to every extent necessary firstly, and then brings the issue to the full attention of parents and the community overall, next.
I’ve worked with some of your transportation maintenance staff in the private sector in decades past, and I will be a supportive and a robust booster in the business community locally, and with the Legislature in Sacramento, for any proposals to upgrade your fleet that you may put forward now. Private funding and grants are available.
State revenues that MHSD will recapture from increased school attendance associated with improved student respiratory health may be significant. And I am advised that maintenance costs associated with an updated and under warranty fleet, will further bolster the district’s bottom line.
The bottom line is that our little kids are suffering now and it’s our responsibility to do something about it. Yesterday.
I look forward to the opportunity to be of assistance in any way that I am able and to strongly advocating for the repair of this crisis, until it’s ultimately fixed.
Christopher M. Coté,
Gilroy
