Fuel Station Has City All Pumped Up

It looks like an ordinary gas pump, but a new fueling station installed by the city of Thousand Oaks is a major step in the ongoing drive to purge Ventura County’s skies of ozone levels that a federal agency ranks as fifth worst in the nation.

The city is the first in the county to install and sponsor a “fast-fill” pump for vehicles powered by compressed natural gas. The equipment can fill a tank in four to six minutes, a vast improvement over the eight to 10 hours formerly needed for the volatile but clean-burning fuel.

“You have to have a station like this before anyone in their right mind will get a CNG vehicle,” said Wayne Tanaka, a representative for the Southern California Gas Co. “You’ve got to start with key players making a commitment.”

The new fueling station, which goes into operation today outside the city’s Municipal Service Center at 1993 Rancho Conejo Blvd., is open to the public and accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

On Thursday, the city also unveiled its four new CNG-powered Orion “Blue Sky” buses, driven 2,500 miles from the New York factory where they were assembled on chassis built in Ontario, Canada.

The buses and fuel station are part of a campaign by the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, Ventura County Clean Air Fund and Southern California Gas Co. to promote the wider use of clean-burning CNG-powered cars, trucks and buses. The agencies are especially targeting vehicle fleets operated by utility companies and other corporations, city and county government agencies, public transportation departments and municipal services.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency ranks Ventura County’s ozone levels as fifth worst in the nation, up from ninth last year. The pale-blue form of oxygen can cause watery eyes and breathing difficulties.

Natural gas emits fewer pollutants than gasoline or diesel fuel, and has been used for several years as a cost-effective way to run irrigation pumps. It has had more limited appeal for motor vehicles, though, partly because refueling took so long.

The new Thousand Oaks fueling station compresses and cools the same natural gas that fires stoves and water heaters to 4,000 pounds per square inch, which condenses it into a liquid that can be transferred into large underground holding tanks.

The fuel sells for the equivalent of 85 cents per gallon.

South Coast Area Transit, serving western Ventura County, operates 26 CNG-powered buses, and Simi Valley has plans to order four vehicles similar to the ones purchased by Thousand Oaks.

Other operators of CNG-powered fleet vehicles in the county include GTE, the Gas Co., Seneca Resources, the U.S. Navy and American Lung Assn.

Thousand Oaks Transit representative Dell Donoho, who drove for Greyhound for 21 years, is enthusiastic about the new buses, powered by 240-horsepower Cummins L10 engines built especially for use with liquid natural gas.

“The performance of them is remarkable--it’s really very good,” Donoho said. “The drivers are chomping at the bit to get at them.”

Additional CNG fueling stations similar to the one in Thousand Oaks are planned for Camarillo and Simi Valley.

More than 175 fast-fill CNG fueling stations are in operation in California, with about 1,100 nationwide.