Port of Long Beach gets grants for pollution-reduction programs

A $1.3 million grant will help the Port of Long Beach advance its pollution-reduction programs as part of a broader effort to reduce pollution on Southern California roadways.

As part of the federal Diesel Emission Reduction Act of 2005, the South Coast Air Quality Management District will spend grant money to replace 50 diesel-powered, medium-duty urban delivery trucks with fully electric trucks in the region, said Michael Ardito, spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco.

By removing older, diesel trucks from the road, the EPA estimates the air in the four-county Los Angeles basin will realize a reduction of 11.79 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx), 0.48 tons of tiny diesel particles (PM) that can lodge in the lungs, 1.16 tons of hydrocarbons (HC), 5.61 tons of carbon monoxide (CO) and 707 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Trucks that will be replaced under the program will be at least 10 years old and can't be retrofit with other clean technology.

"These are usually trucks that are a little bigger than a small box truck," explained Allen Schaefer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum in Maryland. "The box truck that is delivering produce or delivering paper goods to a hospital or nursing home. They are kind of a last stop in the delivery train."

Part of the port's grant would be used to buy five new yard tractors powered by batteries instead of diesel fuel, explained Lee Peterson, port spokesman.

A second part of the EPA grant will be used to install diesel filters onto rubber-tired cranes that move and stack container boxes and place them on trucks and railcars.

These cranes aren't the larger cranes that unload containers from ships. Those already run on clean fuels, Peterson explained.

The EPA says these projects will reduce reduce 25 tons of NOx, 173 tons of CO, 33 tons of PM, and 733 tons of CO2 over the life of the project.

Peterson said the grant money will help fund a green energy program already started at the port that may become a model for other ports.

"When the other terminal operators see how this works, well, then they can do this in (the ports) of L.A., San Diego and up the coast," he said.

The EPA announced it would award a total of $30 million in grant money from the DERA program nationwide.

Diesel engines emit 7.3 million tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and 333,000 tons of soot annually, according to the EPA.

The federal program has awarded about 500 grants since the program was first funded in 2008, Ardito said.