EPA Awards $9.2 Million In Clean Diesel Stimulus Fund To PA Projects

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mid-Atlantic regional office has awarded $16.1 million to seven significant projects to reduce diesel pollution. These clean diesel projects will create jobs while protecting air quality.

“We are proud of the diverse scope of the projects and many partners that we are able to support with $16.1 million in diesel grant funds (in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia) to help reduce harmful diesel emissions. Each one of these projects is important because of its technology, geography, and the sector it addresses,” said William C. Early, acting regional administrator for the mid-Atlantic region.

The funds are provided under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program. Under this funding competition, EPA’s mid-Atlantic region received 40 grant applications requesting $159 million to help fund clean diesel emissions projects.

The awards were chosen to both maximize economic impact and emissions reductions.  Recovery Act funds will go towards the following projects:

-- 2009 Mid-Atlantic Diesel Reduction Campaign A $4.3 million grant to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Air Management Association will fund a wide range of diesel projects in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, including replacing transit buses and off-road engines, retrofitting dump trucks, replacing cement trucks and repowering boats.

-- Allegheny County Diesel Project A $3.49 million grant to Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Health Department will fund the replacement of transit buses with diesel hybrids and repowering others; retrofitting dump trucks with diesel particulate filters; repowering switch locomotive; repowering engines and upgrading engines and adding diesel particulate filters.

-- Mother Slug Locomotive Repower A $1.5 million grant to Department of Environmental Protection will fund re-powering pre-1973 locomotives with a four-axle locomotive powered with an engine approaching Tier 3 emission standards (Mother) and a four-axle platform consisting of four traction motors without an engine.

-- Chesapeake Bay Marine Engine Repower A $1.3 million grant to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation will fund retrofitting for two education vessels, seven watermen workboats, and one tug boats operating out of Maryland and Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.