The state’s Division of Air Quality has awarded $180,986 in grants for projects to reduce air pollution from mobile sources. Of that amount, Polk County Schools was awarded $71,421 to retrofit five school buses with diesel particulate filters.

Mobile sources are any type of vehicle that can pollute the air, including automobiles, trucks, buses, locomotives, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, construction equipment and lawnmowers.

The grants cover a range of projects, such as retrofitting school buses with controls to curb diesel emissions, repowering non-road equipment with cleaner-burning engines and converting vehicles to run on alternative fuels such as compressed natural gas.

The state Department of Environmental Quality is awarding the grants through the 2016 Diesel Emissions Reduction Grant program, which is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act program.

The purpose of Diesel Emissions Reduction Act program is to support projects designed to achieve significant diesel emissions reductions. The state Department of Environmental Quality’s grant is administered through the state Division of Air Quality.

The 2016 Diesel Emissions Reduction Grant winners include three projects.
Polk County Schools was a recipient of one of those three.

For more information about the mobile sources diesel
emissions reduction grant program, visit deq.nc.gov or email daq.mscb.ncdaqgrants
@ncdenr.gov.

– article submitted by Jill Warren Lucas