Source: Journal of Commerce
December 14th 2015
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency has approved an $870,000 grant to help replace 25 older drayage trucks at the Port of Baltimore with cleaner-operating units with engines from the 2011 or later model years.
The grant is the latest in a series by the EPA to reduce emissions of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Other recent grants include money for 80 trucks at the Port of New York and New Jersey, the East Coast’s busiest port.
Truck replacement is a top concern at New York-New Jersey, where the port authority’s clean-air program requires replacement by Jan. 1, 2017 of the approximately 6,300 trucks that have pre-2007 engines. About 70 percent of the port’s trucks are in that category.
The New York-New Jersey port’s latest EPA grant, and two previous ones that have helped finance replacement of 429 older trucks in the last five years, fall far short of the requirements to fund the older trucks scheduled for phase-out during the next year.
Port authority officials and representatives of environmental, community and industry groups have been meeting for months to try to come up with a revised program that keeps the clean-air program moving forward but doesn’t disrupt port commerce.