Port of Tacoma receives environmental grant

Port of Tacoma receives environmental grant    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given the Port of Tacoma a grant to fund the retrofit of the port’s fleet of straddle carriers.
   Straddle carriers are machines used to transport containers from dock to rail, where they “straddle” rail cars.
   The $75,000 EPA grant has been supplemented with up to $40,000 from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency to retrofit the port’s fleet of 30 straddle carriers with diesel oxidation catalysts.
   The port of Tacoma said that the catalysts, combined with the requirement to use ultra-low sulfur diesel on port-operated equipment when possible, will reduce straddle carrier particulate emissions by “up to 50 percent.”
   “Unlike Southern California, where efforts are focused on the reduction of nitrogen oxides (NOx), efforts to improve air quality in the Puget Sound region focus on reducing diesel particulates,” a spokesman for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency said.