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EEAB ANTI-IDLING

EEAB ANTI-IDLING

This policy applies to all school buses operating in the Pentucket Regional School District and all vehicles operating in the Pentucket Regional School zone.

  1. To eliminate unnecessary idling of vehicles in the Pentucket School zone in order to help reduce the community’s exposure to exhaust from gasoline and diesel engines.

  2. To educate and to inform school employees, school vendors, school visitors, students and parents about the health and the environmental effects of gasoline and diesel exhausts.

Massachusetts General Law (MGL. Chapter 90, Section 16A) and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) idling reduction regulation (310 MGR 7.11 (1) (b) both prohibit unnecessary idling by stating that vehicle engines must be shut down if a vehicle is stopped for more than five minutes.

Exemptions include:

  • The vehicle is being serviced and the idling is required to repair the vehicle; or

  • The vehicle is making deliveries and needs to keep its engine running (to power refrigerators, as an example); and

  • The vehicle’s accessory equipment needs to be powered, such as a fork lift or a truck’s rear dump bed, or a wheel chair lift in a bus or van.

  • A school bus that arrives at a school a long period prior to student pickup during very cold weather where maintaining the heat would be necessary in order to provide a safe environment for the students and driver.


 

Adopted: March 22, 2022