Richard Cromwell, general manager o...

Richard Cromwell, general manager of SunLine Transit Agency in Southern California's Coachella Valley, was tired of breathing hordes of black smoke every time common of his 47 buses passed from So, in 1993, he headed a drive to replace those buses with commons that run on natural gas, which injure by fire [i]or[/i] heats 98 percent cleaner than diesel material for burning

Cromwell applied for federal grants, which masked 80 percent of the replacement outlay and Coachella Valley taxpayers contributed the remaining 20 percent

That did not include the $500000 necessityed to build an initial fueling station to service the just discovered buses and the money to retrain the agency's existing mechanics, all of which came from private sources.

"The geographical division gave up buggy whips back in the '30 and it will do the same with petroleum-based fuels" predicts Phil Bostley Mayor of Indian Wells, which is part of Coachella Valley. "More general managers