Help to cut diesel emissions available

By: SCNow Staff | SCNow
Published: November 29, 2008

Local businesses can now ask the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control for financial help to reduce diesel emissions.

The new program is made possible by the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act. According to DHEC, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency presented a grant award of more than $246,000 to aid in the development of the project.

Brian Barnes, spokesman for DHEC, said the grant money presents the office with a chance to make South Carolina air even sweeter.

“We’re learning as we go along,” he said. “We’ve never had this opportunity before.”

He said the money will go a long way to encourage people to make an effort to reduce diesel emissions within the state.

“First of all it will reduce our public exposure to diesel emissions,” he said. “Diesel exhaust has been identified as an asthma trigger and some folks would go so far as to call it a carcinogen. Any chance we have reduce diesel emissions we’re going to do it to our fullest extent.”

Myra Reece, chief of DHEC’s Air Quality Bureau, said in a statement that the proposed projects can include retrofits, engine replacements or rebuilds, idle reduction technologies, or cleaner fuels, which are all things being done by the S.C. Department of Education in an attempt to reduce diesel emissions from school buses through the Clean School Bus USA Program.

Barnes said the Department of Education is most likely to be the largest source of diesel emissions in the state.

“But, in fairness to them, they have done great things to reduce diesel emissions by participating in the Clean School Bus USA grant program,” he said. “They’ve received nearly $800,000 in federal funds through that program.”

Barnes said the office hopes the project will become an annual endeavor.

“We’re just excited about the opportunity,” he said. “We’re very committed to this thing. We want to be a great success.”