Clean air isn’t cheap, but it’s worth the cost
Our view: It’s strange to see school officials complaining about a push to improve kids’ health.
School budgets are tight, and costly mandates from Sacramento are about as welcome as a staph outbreak in the boys locker room.
But it's strange to see school officials grousing about rules aimed at improving students' health.
Transportation managers from north state districts did just that Monday at a meeting in Redding of the California Air Resources Board, complaining that required retrofits of diesel buses will further drain school budgets. A $20,000 overhaul, one pointed out, equals half a teacher's salary.
There's no free lunch, to be sure, but clean air is as good an investment as you can find -- especially when it comes to school buses.
Multiple studies of air quality on buses have found that children are exposed to substantial diesel exhaust on their way to school thanks to fumes from the bus itself. Older buses are especially prone to the problem. It's not lethal, but children's young lungs are especially tender. Why expose them to more crud than we must?
The technology to filter diesel soot and otherwise run cleaner exists, and the California Air Resources Board is pushing for an aggressive schedule to force old trucks and buses off the road or require overhauls.
Commercial truckers have been trying to slow the switch, arguing that the costs -- as high as $13 billion, according to industry estimates -- will be bankrupting, especially on top of $5-a-gallon diesel.
The state is studying low-interest loan programs and other ways to ease the switch to cleaner diesel engines. Such incentives only make sense when imposing a multibillion-dollar new burden, especially for the many independent truckers on California's roads.
But the benefits of cleaner air go beyond blue skies. Lower diesel emissions will mean fewer asthma attacks, fewer cases of acute bronchitis, even less lung cancer. It will save billions in health care costs and prevent thousands of early deaths.
The short-term pain would leave us much better off in the long run. Isn't that the kind of lesson schools try to teach?