The Village of Arlington Heights, Ill., located about 40 minutes from Chicago, is one of the largest towns in the Windy City’s affluent northwest suburbs and the 13th largest municipality in Illinois. With approximately 75,000 residents, the village motto is “A City of Good Neighbors.”

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the residents and elected officials got together and made a “thank-you” video for the essential workers in the police, fire and public works departments. “It was a really nice gesture,” said Ray Salisbury, fleet services foreman for the village of Arlington Heights. “This community comes together in good times and bad. It’s very family and community oriented. This is the first place I’ve been where the community supports public works and all we do, and where they’re happy to have us as part of their community. It makes working here much more rewarding.” The support is reciprocal.

Salisbury and the village’s staff return the favor to the community by operating a fleet of more than 120 diesel-powered vehicles and equipment on cleaner-burning, lower-carbon B20, a blend of 20% biodiesel and 80% conventional diesel fuel. Biodiesel is a nontoxic, biodegradable renewable fuel made from biobased feedstocks, such as excess soybean oil, waste kitchen grease and animal fats. In its pure form, biodiesel can reduce CO2 emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas, by more than 85% while cutting carcinogenic particulate matter — black soot — by nearly 50%, in addition to lowering many other tailpipe emissions.

The diesel vehicles Salisbury manages, however, aren’t the only ones fueling up on this environmentally friendly blend of biodiesel. Several outside agencies — including the school and park districts, and the Wheeling Township senior-transport buses, for instance — leverage the availability of this green fuel provided by the village of Arlington Heights’ public works department.

“Some of these outside agencies are part of the village but are not under the village’s umbrella,” Salisbury explained. “By offering B20 at our pumps, we are extending our positive impact beyond the village’s own operations. This allows us to provide healthier air and a cleaner environment for our residents and our neighbors.”

B20 Club fuels success

The public works department’s fueling system, managed by the fleet services division, consists of two B20 dispensers, which were recently upgraded thanks to a grant from the USDA’s Higher Blends Infrastructure Incentive Program (HBIIP) and application assistance from the B20 Club of Illinois, a partnership between the American Lung Association and the Illinois Soybean Association checkoff program. The B20 Club is comprised of more than 20 member companies and organizations committed to using B20 and higher biodiesel blends. To date, member fleets have consumed more than 62 million gallons of drop-in B20 and higher biodiesel blends.

The public works department for the village of Arlington Heights has been using B20 year-round since 2007. Salisbury has been the village’s fleet services foreman for eight years of his 26-year public works career, serving with the cities of Rock Island and Des Plaines before joining the village in October 2013. While the department was using B20 before he joined the team, Salisbury quickly became a B20 believer and began sharing information on biodiesel with colleagues at Municipal Fleet Managers Association (MFMA) meetings. That is also where he became acquainted with the B20 Club.

“I was at an MFMA meeting in 2015 and the B20 Club was giving a presentation,” he said. “It seemed good to be a part of it. They would highlight our use of B20, not only for others to understand the viability of the product, but also so residents know we’re doing a good thing here — that we have the best interest of the village and its residents in mind.”

He said the B20 Club is able to do a much better job of promoting the village’s use of biodiesel to the public than he and his team could do. The club promotes its members’ positive health and environmental impacts through their use of B20 and higher blends while also providing — among other benefits — technical training, fuel-quality testing, education and outreach services, grant opportunities and assistance, and networking support. Many of these perks coalesced when Salisbury was ready to replace his B20 pumps.

“Our fuel system was quickly becoming obsolete, and we needed to replace our dispensers,” Salisbury said. “They were so old that the manufacturer stopped making parts, and it was getting harder and harder to find used parts to repair them.”

At a B20 Club stakeholder meeting, the topic of assistance for submitting grant applications was brought up. Salisbury contacted Bailey Arnold, director of Clean Air Initiatives for the American Lung Association and lead of the B20 Club of Illinois.

“We got together, and he and the Clean Air Initiatives team helped get our application submitted,” Salisbury said. “We were awarded an HBIIP grant to replace our dated and unreliable dispensers with newer, modern ones. The grant covered half the cost of the equipment, which allowed us to make additional upgrades, including the addition of DEF, at the same time.” DEF is diesel exhaust fluid, a urea-based liquid used with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems to drastically reduce NOx emissions from diesel engines.

The grant also helped upgrade the fuel kiosk, which was starting to show its age, as well as repaving the entire driveway coming in over the underground fuel tanks, including new below-grade spill containers. “We were able to modernize and improve the fuel system to create a better experience for our employees and outside customers,” Salisbury said.

The networking opportunities provided by the B20 Club have proven invaluable for the village of Arlington Heights, providing the public works department with a platform to share stories of their success. For instance, Salisbury said some people claim they cannot run or source B20 in the winter because of outdated concerns or misinformation.

“We’ve been able to run B20 for the past 15 years,” he said. “And in that time, we have only had one little glitch, which thankfully our contractor figured out after a fellow B20 member told us where to get winterized B20.”

Arnold said fellow B20 Club member Al Warren Oil Company Inc., a specialized petroleum marketer based in Chicago, helped Salisbury identify terminals offering winterized B20 when his contractor had a difficult time finding the blend over the winter. “The partnerships created through the B20 Club are a prime example of why the club was formed,” Arnold said. “It provides opportunities for folks to reach out to one another to solve problems. And this situation was no different.”

Another B20 Club member, Ozinga, won a competitive bid to provide the concrete foundation for the B20 pump islands with a concrete mixer also powered by B20. The job was bid out like any other municipal engagement but, as Bailey put it, “It was like fate intervened to have a B20-powered mixer pouring the concrete for B20 pumps. It really brought things full circle and made for a great story.”

In the spirit of supporting a fellow B20 Club member, Ag-Land FS Inc., a full-service fuel and lubricants provider based in Pekin, Ill., also lent a hand by cleaning the village’s tanks and polishing its fuel. “Ag-Land stepped in and provided that service for free,” Arnold said. “They don’t market fuel in the Chicagoland area, so it was truly just one member supporting another. I think that highlights how invaluable the connections our members make with one another are.”

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