Written by

Beth Farrah, SMT Writer

Lee’s Summit, Missouri – A lot is happening in the small town of Lee’s Summit, an outlying Kansas City suburb. Within the past few months, their school district has focused on converting nearly all of their school buses and other vehicles related to the school from diesel fuel to natural gas.

The Lee’s Summit School District will have a total of one hundred and six school buses running routes for their students during this upcoming school year. The Kansas City Star has reported that the local school district will be focusing on this new idea and within the next ten years, almost all of their 149 school buses will be ran off of natural gas instead of diesel. The other buses that are not switching over to natural gas will be using a different type of fuel. The vans, trucks, and other school-related vehicles will follow the buses and will also be switching over to alternative fuel options.

Although the district is spending around twenty million dollars on the upcoming conversion, they will be saving about eleven million dollars in the long run over the span of ten school years. The Kansas City School District reportedly bought 47 natural gas buses back in 2011, which jumpstarted the idea of converting all of their school buses.

Although gasoline and diesel fuel prices increase at gas stations across the nation, many people tend to overlook the pros and cons of using compressed natural gas. Compressed natural gas is a clean-burning fuel and is the cleanest of all fossil fuels available to us. Since it is a clean-burning fuel, natural gas leaves no residue like gasoline and diesel do. Natural gas is made up mostly of methane, which means that when it is burned, it leaves only carbon dioxide and water vapor (these products are the same products that human beings create when exhaling).

Since almost no residue is produced when burning natural gas, the pipes and parts of the vehicles it is used on decreases tremendously, making it safer to use on school buses. With no residue and little or no damage to the pipes and motor parts, this makes the time frame between maintenance procedures, which will save the school district money in the long run.

Lee’s Summit has found an eco-friendly solution to an ongoing problem among schools across the nation. This could be the first step for Missouri schools, along with other schools in other parts of the country, to create a “Green School District”.