The state's revised plan for what to do with money from a Volkswagen settlement takes public feedback into account.
Indiana received more than $40 million after the company violated the Clean Air Act. Several people wanted to use the money for greener school buses and electric charging stations — and the new draft covers those bases.
More than half of the money would go toward repowering or replacing old diesel freight trucks, school buses, and transit buses.
Janet McCabe is with the Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute. She says she’s pleased to see that 30 percent of school buses would be electric and hopes IDEM will prioritize cleaner technologies in the plan — instead of replacing old diesel engines with newer ones.
"That won’t make the most difference and there’s lots of information coming out about how new diesel engines degrade over time," McCabe says.