On a 70-degree spring day, it may be hard to remember the heartache of waking up to subzero temperatures. Denice Blake doesn’t have that trouble.

Blake is the transportation director for Bend-La Pine Schools, with a fleet of 130 buses that pick up about 6,000 students each weekday. On such cold mornings, she said, “We get buses two or three blocks out of the bus yard and they’re stopped. They’re not moving.”

School districts east of the Cascades are among the groups backing a bill in Salem that would drop the mandated use of biodiesel in winter months. Senate Bill 164 provides an exemption from the requirement that fuel must contain a certain percentage of biodiesel or other renewable diesel in counties east of the summit of the Cascade Mountains from Nov. 1 to Feb. 28.

Petroleum-based diesel and biodiesel are both subject to gelling at low temperatures, but biodiesel gels at a higher temperature. This leads to clogged fuel filters that stop buses in their tracks, Blake said. (Forty percent of Bend-La Pine’s fleet runs on propane.) They then have to be towed and the filters replaced. In years past, this has led to delaying or canceling school because the buses can’t get going.

Renewable fuel standards passed by the Legislature in 2007 required diesel sold in Oregon to contain 2 percent biodiesel beginning in 2009. In 2011 that went up to 5 percent after in-state biodiesel production hit 15 million gallons.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls, has framed the issues as part of Oregon’s urban-rural divide. His district includes La Pine and Prineville.

“In rural parts, it gets cold,” said Scott Jorgensen, Whitsett’s chief of staff. “The big push for a lot of this has come from the lawmakers from Oregon’s more urban areas … but its impacts on people in rural areas (don’t) seem like (they were) included in the discussion.”

Crook County School District deals with the gelling issue by keeping its buses warm on cold nights. A heater kicks in if the temperature drops too low, and staff will run buses on Sunday if Monday morning is expected to have a chilly start. Many drivers use additives that prevent fuel from gelling, but that only protects to a certain threshold. This mild winter was a reprieve, but Blake said in 2013-14 there were two or three mornings when class in La Pine was canceled.

“It’s not that I don’t support biodiesel,” Blake said, “but you need to have the freedom to choose for the area you live in.”

The National Biodiesel Board opposes SB 164 and points to fleets across the country using biodiesel with average December low temperatures below those in Eastern Oregon. The Oregon Environmental Council warned the bill undermines in-state and regional production and use of reliable renewable fuels.

The Oregon Farm Bureau and Oregon Trucking Association gave testimony in support of the bill at a public hearing last month. The bill has been referred to the Senate’s rules committee.

— Reporter: 541-617-7837,

aspegman@bendbulletin.com