The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District will receive thousands of dollars in diesel emission reduction funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to replace heavy duty trucks powered by cleaner, newer engines.
The $677,214 will swap out 48 heavy duty trucks with 2013 or newer engine models.
The funding is part of EPA’s DERA fiscal year 2014 allocation, which will include engine replacements, repowers and idle reduction technologies to clean up a variety of older diesel engines, according to an EPA news release.
EPA has implemented standards to make newly manufactured diesel engines more than 90 percent cleaner.
Older diesel engines emit large amounts of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulate matter that are linked to health problems, including aggravated asthma, lung damage and other serious health problems, the news release stated.
The effort is part of the West Coast Collaborative, a clean air partnership that leverages public and private funds to reduce emissions from the most polluting diesel sources in impacted communities, according to an EPA news release.
“This project to reduce diesel emissions is a great example of how collaboration among public and private partners can make a difference to our local communities,” Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest, stated in a news release. “As a result, residents of the San Joaquin Valley will be able to breathe cleaner, healthier air.”
Along the West Coast, public, private and tribal partners from California, Hawaii, Oregon and Idaho received a total of nearly $3.5 million in funding to retrofit and replace old, polluting diesel vehicles and equipment, including school buses, short and long haul trucks.
A total of $8 million was awarded to a number of clean diesel projects nationwide.