City OK’S $14M contract for hydrogen, with notes

City will use the current natural gas-powered buses until they are no longer usable

The city of Santa Clarita approved this week an approximately $14 million contract with Trillium for the design and construction of a hydrogen-fueling facility for its transit fleet.

The unanimous vote came with an interesting admission from the city manager, who echoed the sentiment of a council gadfly, sharing in his frustration at the state-mandated, federally funded expenditure.

The city’s agenda item for the contract explained the need for the facility as part of a December 2018 order from the California Air Resources Board, which requires all public transit agencies to have a 100% zero-emissions fleet by 2040.

After Adrian Aguilar, the city’s transportation manager, presented the agenda item to the City Council, resident Steve Petzold, a local Realtor and regular fixture at municipal meetings, asked the dais in a frustrated tone if the city would just recognize this wasn’t something they wanted to do.

“I would at least ask for an acknowledgement that this is an unfunded mandate,” Petzold said, calling the entire program a “big scam” because “it is not economically viable to produce hydrogen.”

While the city has invested millions of dollars in its fleet of compressed natural gas-powered buses in just the last 10 years alone based on fleet costs, as City Manager Ken Striplin pointed out to the City Council on Tuesday, the hydrogen station “is an absolute requirement.”

“He’s right. We had a significant investment in CNG. CNG no longer qualifies,” Striplin explained to the audience Tuesday in response to Petzold’s comments, also noting the city would not be retiring