Under the watchful eye of a community task force, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is preparing to build the city’s greenest bus depot in Harlem. The old Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot, on Lenox Avenue between 147th and 146th streets, was demolished this spring to make room for the environmentally friendly new building, which will retain its original name.

The building will make use of “state of the art” technologies, MTA official George Menduina told task force members touring the 100th Street Depot recently.

The new depot will be constructed from recycled materials and outfitted with a green roof of plants. A rooftop collection system will gather rainwater to wash buses, said Phil Cross, design manager of the depot.

The facility will also use highly efficient T5 lights, many to be connected to motion sensors, and natural gas, instead of oil, will heat the building, Menduina said.

The MTA is applying for, and expects to get, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, making this the first city depot to do so, Cross said.

The depot’s design will also significantly reduce pollution compared to its predecessor, important to nearby residents, especially those across the street in Esplanade Gardens, a six-building public housing apartment complex, who had complained about the old depot.

“The air around it wasn’t healthy,” said Deborah Gillard, task force member and Esplanade Garden resident. “A lot of people in the neighborhood had asthma and respiratory ailments.”

Although the MTA tried to bring cleaner buses to the old depot, the filter system was inadequate, said Gillard, who is also a member of Community Board 10.

Now, the MTA is considering different filtration systems, seeking the most efficient one, Menduina said. All buses will be kept inside the depot, and the building’s doors will close automatically once each bus has entered, to prevent exhaust from wafting outside.

The task force dates to a community meeting three years ago, convened by Assemblyman Denny Farrell, at which residents expressed apprehension about a new building and instead “just wanted the depot gone,” said Earnestine Bell-Temple, Farrell’s representative on the task force. Farrell asked for volunteers, and the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot Task Force formed shortly thereafter.

Made up of community residents, organizations and elected officials’ representatives, the task force draws about 15 core members and maintains regular contact with about 200 people, said Charles Callaway of WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

It operates as a “watchdog” over the MTA and a “voice of the community in the project,” added Anthonine Pierre, community liaison at the Manhattan Borough President’s office.

The task force has stayed in regular contact with the MTA. “It’s beneficial to both sides for all of us to understand the issues and the challenges that are involved in having a bus depot in a neighborhood,” Cross said, adding that the task force has provided the MTA with “valuable information.”

So far, task force members say the MTA has been cooperative and responsive. Callaway said his group worries that budget constraints or other problems might become obstacles. But money has been allocated for the project and Cross anticipates no problems with the budget, he said.

Even so, the task force plans to continue its monitoring. “We have to make sure we press them and they do not like being pressed,” Callaway said of the MTA.

Task force members have already clashed with officials about art outside the depot. They want to put voting members on the panel that selects the artist, whom they hope will be Harlem-based. But the MTA insists it must follow established government guidelines, which would only allow task force members to suggest art professionals for the panel, said Sandra Bloodworth, director of MTA Arts in Transit.

Callaway described the procedure as “unjust.”

“They don’t have to see it,” he said. “We live here. We have to look at it.”

Constructed as a barn in 1860, the previous building stood in the neighborhood for over a century. “Once this is built, we can expect it to be here for the next 100 years,” Callaway said.