Pollution concerns flagged in bus depot debate

Report adds fuel to worries about move to Webb Tract

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005

by Sebastian Montes

Staff Writer

The exhaust from diesel engines — containing carbon monoxide, particulates, ozone, nitrogen oxides and countless other noxious ingredients — has been linked to haze, acidification of the ground and water, asthma, bronchitis and impaired lung development in children.

Michael Bailey expected as much as he pored through county documents and federal Environmental Protection Agency reports in order to understand what the health impacts would be if the county relocated as many as 400 school buses from its service park in Shady Grove to the Airpark North Business Park, a 134-acre lot off Snouffer School Road near Montgomery Village formerly known as the Webb Tract.

What the Defense Department microbiologist did not expect, however, was that not only is Montgomery County already in violation of federal air quality standards for two of six ‘‘criteria pollutants” (and only recently came into compliance for a third), but that by state and county rule, any one of the county’s 1,252 school buses (all with diesel engines) can go its entire life without once having its emissions checked.

‘‘I’m not surprised about the level of pollutants, just that there’s no program to control them,” he said. ‘‘Some of those school buses could be emitting hundreds of times the accepted limits of certain pollutants and no one will ever know.”

The Montgomery Village Foundation included Bailey’s findings in a letter it passed on to County Executive Douglas M. Duncan last month, imploring that the county re-evaluate its proposal to redevelop the area around the Shady Grove Metrorail station into a mixed-use commercial and residential haven.

The plan could require that the county school bus depot on Crabbs Branch Way — and several other county services — be moved to the Webb Tract.

‘‘It’s serious, but it’s not so alarming that people need to run out and get a gas mask,” he said. ‘‘It’s just that on a very localized level, people are going to see a decrease in their air quality,” the extent of which he said depends on weather and environmental conditions.

‘‘But yeah, if you walk outside and 400 school buses are coming out of the lot, you bet you’ll notice the difference,” he said.

According to John Matthews, director of county schools transportation, the 400-bus depot in Shady Grove is by more than 100 buses the biggest of the five depots that hold the county’s fleet.

It has been some 30 years since the county moved a depot, he said, when it dispersed one depot into smaller depots in Bethesda, Clarksburg and Shady Grove. All three are now running at 190 percent capacity.

Matthews doesn’t see bigger as making for a better depot: dealing with roadway congestion, the proximity to major roadways and the communities the buses serve, and the site’s capacity to handle future growth introduce complications that cannot be solved with size alone.

‘‘I don’t feel like 600 buses is a good plan. I would prefer 200 to 300,” he said.

He guessed that Snouffer School Road would be ‘‘heavily burdened” by however many buses might go there (even after the two-lane road is expanded to five lanes, following Webb Tract owner Miller and Smith Inc.’s approved site plan). But he also said that, ‘‘we operate on congested roadways all the time,” with the Bethesda and West Farm depots both operating ‘‘reasonably well” on their two-lane roads.

As part of the Shady Grove redevelopment, the county is expected to send out its official ‘‘requests for qualifications” at the end of this month, which specifies how much land the county is looking for from developers in order to swap for the rights to develop around the metro.

So far only a recently-formed partnership between Miller and Smith Inc., (which owns the Webb Tract) and Eakin-Youngentob Associates (which holds the rights to two plots off Interstate 370 known as Casey 6 and 7) appear able to make the exchange.