One of the dirtiest jobs in Howard and Anne Arundel counties could soon be one of the cleanest for the atmosphere.
The neighboring jurisdictions plan to establish the state's first natural-gas fueling station for trash trucks and have applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for $600,000 in grant money to help haulers switch to alternative-fuel vehicles.
Officials hope the change could help the counties fend off the skyrocketing price of diesel fuel while cutting down on the emission of greenhouse gases.
"Using clean, environmentally friendly fuels in this area could have tremendous benefits to county government operation and the health of our environment, particularly the Chesapeake Bay," said Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold, who recently scrapped the county's take-home police car program to save money on fuel costs. "It's the ongoing and continuing search for efficiency that hopefully would be environmentally friendly at the same time."
Natural-gas trash trucks have been in service in California since 1997, said Brandon Bloodworth, the regional account manager for Clean Energy Fuels Corp., the company proposing to build the shared fueling station in Jessup. Bloodworth said such programs are just starting to make financial sense and generate "political will" on the East Coast.
"The haulers are paying less for fuel, the county is getting hit with less surcharge, and the people are getting cleaner air and pay less in taxes," he said. "It's cleaner, it's domestic and it reduces our dependency on foreign oil."
Clean Energy, which operates about 180 natural gas stations across the country, including the one that fuels natural gas-powered buses at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, was founded by T. Boone Pickens, a former oil mogul turned green warrior who launched a nationwide clean energy campaign last week that centers on a plan to exploit the country's "wind corridor" by building a nearly continuous wind farm.
The Texas billionaire believes wind energy will free up natural gas for conversion into transportation fuel, and Texas officials approved yesterday launching the network there.
Bloodworth said the newest natural gas station in Maryland is "where the rubber meets the road" for Pickens' strategy, and Clean Energy plans to put up more than $1 million to build the facility, hoping that the county governments will hire it to hook the station to existing pipelines, compress the gas into a usable form and dispense it to contractors.
