Capital District
Clean Communities
Capital District Clean Communities
June 26, 2008 Meeting
Meeting Notes
Attendance
David Brown, Premiere Limo
Vicki Connors, National Grid
Mike Dornan, National Grid
Dennis Decker, National Grid
Ken Gurney, National Grid
Steve Iachetta,
Ed Kantowski, National Grid
Steven Levy, Sprague Energy
Chuck MacNeil, CDTA
Ronnie Marks, National Grid
Dave McCabe, NYSERDA
Alex Michaels, NYSERDA
Paul Patterson, City of
Pete Rea, NYSDOT R-1
Scott Rabeler,
Larry Reisigl, National Grid
Dennis Smith, National Grid
Deborah Stacey, CDTC Staff, CDCC Coordinator
Chris Wachtel, National Grid
SUMMARY NOTES: Steven Levy
from Sprague Energy invited the Capital District Clean Communities Coalition to
the Sprague facility at the
1. NYSERDA
a. NYSERDA has several Project
Opportunity Notices (PONS) available that might be of interest to the CDCC. The first is a Bio-fuel Retail Station
program that pays 50% of the cost of installing the hardware needed to sell
bio-fuel at the pump. The second round
of the bio-fuel distributor program will be released this summer (PON 1234). NYSERDA will solicit for another round of the
school bus retrofit program which pays for 100% of the cost to retrofit diesel
buses with Diesel oxidation catalysts and particulate filters. The Clean Cities Challenge program will be
announced this fall. NYSERDA just awarded
CDTA $17 million for bus purchases under the clean fuel bus program.
2. CDTC:
a. The solicitation for the CMAQ diesel retrofit
program was distributed to the Clean Communities coalition members, CDTC’s
Planning Committee and to the County and Town departments of Public works. Five proposals were received and
approved. The Town of
b. CDTC staff has been pursing Transportation Demand
Management activities with the help of CDTA.
The conversion of the Commuter Register to “ipool2” is progressing. A press event will be held once the
conversion is complete and the new software is thoroughly tested.
3. OTHER NEWS:
a. Premiere Transportation: David Brown from Premiere Transportation is
attending his first Clean Communities meeting today. Premiere Transportation uses limousines and
buses in their transport business. Eight
limousines and one bus runs on Propane fuel.
The bus is a dual fuel bus.
Premiere has a propane fueling station on-site. The propane technology is 90-95% as efficient
as gasoline. David will ask his contacts
at American Alternative Fuel to give a presentation on the Propane technology
and vehicle products to the coalition at the September CDCC meeting.
The group toured Sprague’s Bio-diesel
blending facility. The information
provided was very interesting. Many
questions were fielded. Sprague is a
BQ-9000 certified supplier. Sprague
maintains two 20,000 gallon tanks of bio-diesel, which is a soy product at this
time.
Next Meeting
This group will meet again on