Last month, the City of Long Beach burned more hydrocarbons than even the most-traveling salesman. But is there a way for the city to get around that–and help save the environment?

At tomorrow night’s City Council meeting, First District Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal will ask City Manager Pat West to conduct a feasibility study of converting the city’s diesel vehicles to run on biodiesel: “if such use would not require significant modifications to the vehicle engine.

“Currently, the City of Long Beach has 361 diesel vehicles,” Lowenthal writes, “which consumed 21,649 gallons of diesel fuel during December 2007.” Like gasoline, diesel–or “petrodiesel”–is considered much more of a pollution threat than biodiesel. But the councilwoman doesn’t stop there:

“I also request that the City Manager investigate the possibility of encouraging fuel distributors to develop a pump or station that could provide cleaner burning biodiesel blends for both public and private vehicles.”

That’s interesting. If private citizens had a place to actually purchase pre-refined biodiesel (commonly made from vegetable oil), it would probably stimulate our own wavering interest in biodiesel cars.

Added bonus: no matter who’s in the driver’s seat, biodiesel doesn’t reek like petrodiesel–which invariably smells like a bad high school field trip or away-game. The worst-case biodiesel scenario would be smelling like the fries at Burger King.

Tags: biodiesel, bonnie lowenthal, Burger King, California, City Manager Pat West, City of Long Beach, First District, Long Beach, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas