Athol DPW takes receipt of new electric vehicles
Published: 10-11-2024 3:07 PM |
ATHOL – The town has taken receipt of its first electric vehicles (EVs).
One of the vehicles is assigned to the Public Works Department’s water division, the other to the sewer division. DPW Assistant Director Paul Raskevitz said the purchase of the all-electric vehicles fits in with the town’s decarbonization strategy.
“The Decarbonization Task Force and Green Communities master plan, this is what they wanted us to start moving toward,” said Raskevitz. “This is the first spot where (DPW Director) Dick Kilhart and I thought we could, with what’s available commercially, what we could afford. Most of our other vehicles double as plow trucks and salt trucks, so this is the one spot where we thought we could plug in a couple of electric vehicles and not change any of our other emergency operations.”
Raskevitz said that one of the EVs will be used as a meter change-out, water service van, used for meter readings. The Ford F-550 used for that purpose at this time will be repurposed for water projects.
“As for the other one, currently, Athol runs Royalston’s wastewater treatment plant,” he said. “We have to do what we call ‘rounds’ every day. We go to all of our lift (pump) stations and we drive to Royalston every day. Right now, we do that in an F-350. But now we’ll be able to use this electric van.”
Each of the vehicles, according to Raskevitz, is a Ford E-Transit 350. While the list price of each vehicle is $68,000, the town was able to get the trucks for half that cost. Funding for the vans was provided, in part, through the capital budgets for the water and sewer divisions and approved by voters at the June Annual Town Meeting.
“Through retail incentives, rebates, and partial DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) grants, we were to purchase each one of them for around $35,000,” he said.
One of the EVs will be housed at the DPW barn off Unity Avenue, and the other at the wastewater treatment plant off Jones Street.
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“They’ll drive them between 20 and 30 miles a day, which is well within the range of these vehicles,” said Raskevitz. “Then they’ll charge them up every night with a Level 2 charger. We’ve installed Level 2 chargers at each location. No need for going to a charging station; we just plug them in where each vehicle is housed.”
Raskevitz said the EVs will keep about 15,000 pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere each year.
“If not strictly for the environmental reasons,” Raskevitz added, “another reason these EVs make sense for us is because we now have a $35,000 vehicle that we’re doing to be putting 20 or 30 miles on each day, so we’re gong to be saving that same 20 or 30 miles off the F-550 and the F-350, each of which costs around $100,000 to purchase. It will extend the life of both of those vehicles.”
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.