EPA awards $50 million in clean diesel grants

   The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced organizations across the country will receive $50 million to retrofit or repower trucks, locomotives, vessels and other diesel powered equipment with modern engines that produce fewer levels of harmful emissions.
   The competitive grants are part of the agency’s diesel emissions reduction program authorized by Congress in 2005.
   Diesel emissions are considered a human health hazard because they can lead to asthma, allergies, and can worsen lung and heart disease, especially in the elderly and children. Diesel pollution is linked to thousands of premature deaths. It also contributes to smog and greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
  In the past three years, the EPA has awarded almost $470 million to more than 350 grantees that have upgraded or replaced more than 50,000 vehicles and equipment.
  The 2011 grant recipients include:

• Port of Long Beach, Calif. – $2.3 million to replace one truck and retrofit 30 top handlers with diesel particulate filters, and repower one work boat and one crew boat.
• Bay Area Air Quality Management District – $1.5 million to replace 43 Class 8 trucks operating around the Port of Oakland.
• Alabama State Port Authority – $954,000 to repower one locomotive engine.
• Heart of Illinois Regional Port District – $400,000 to repower six tugboats operating along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers.
• Port of Houston Authority – $943,413 to subsidize switch to cleaner fuels in 11 ocean-going vessels.

  The entire list of winners can be found here.