Upper St. Clair Tests Out Natural Gas Car

Some leaders recently got to test out a natural gas vehicle.

The car loan was part of Upper St. Clair's grant from The Heinz Endowment to determine . Upper St. Clair applied for the grant with and .

Ron Sarrick, ' buildings/grounds and sustainability administrator, spent a good amount of time in the Honda Civic Natural Gas last week.

"It was just a loan to get a sense of how it performs. I find it accelerates well and gets you to where you need to go. If you didn't know it was a compressed natural gas vehicle, you wouldn't have known the difference," he said.

The only downfall Sarrick noticed was the lack of trunk space due to the increased size of the fuel cells. However, he thinks the car would still work out well for township administrators.

The study to determine the feasibility of converting the existing municipal vehicle fleets to alternative fuels, including clean burning natural gas, is going on right now. It's expected to be completed in March or April.

Sarrick said he and township officials are concerned about sustainability, the environment and the rising gas prices.

He thinks natural gas vehicles could benefit Upper St. Clair, especially since it only cost him $12.88 to fill up the empty gas tank.