GRANTS AWARDED FOR EMISSIONS CUTS FROM CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT

RALEIGH - State environmental officials have awarded $750,000 in grants for nine projects to reduce air pollution from diesel-powered construction vehicles, with funds provided by the Environmental Protection Agency under the national Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) of 2008.

The grants cover a range of projects, such as retrofitting construction equipment with controls to curb diesel emissions, repowering off-road equipment with cleaner-burning engines, and purchasing new clean-diesel construction vehicles.

The competitive DERA grant is coordinated by the N.C. Division of Air Quality. Project recipients, locations and amounts of grants are:

• Cape Fear Siteworks, Fayetteville, equipment replacement and repowering, $21,750
• Carolina CAT, Charlotte, equipment upgrades and repowering, $105,000
• City of Kannapolis, equipment retrofits, $3,548
• Duke Energy, Charlotte, equipment repowering, $45,120
• Gaston County Solid Waste and Recycling Division, equipment replacement and repowering, Dallas, $149,992
• Hanson Aggregates Southeast LLC, Triangle, Wilson and Rocky Mount metro areas, equipment repowering, $372,336
• Jim Lynch Grading, Pilot Mountain, equipment repowering, $16,012
• Sparks Contracting, Clemmons, equipment repowering, $17,850
• Thalle Construction Co., equipment retrofit, Hillsborough, $18,392

The DERA grants were aimed at older off-road construction equipment with diesel engines, which often lack up-to-date air pollution controls. Older diesel engines contribute significantly to air pollution in North Carolina and other states.

"North Carolina has a number of efforts underway to reduce ozone and particle-forming emissions from industry, power plants and highway vehicles," DAQ Director Keith Overcash said. "These DERA grants will target off-road sources that lack modern emissions controls."

Off-road mobile sources such as construction equipment contribute about 18 percent of the nitrogen oxides (NOx), 16 percent of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and 5 percent of the fine particle pollution (PM 2.5) in North Carolina. NOx and VOCs are the main contributors to ozone, which is unhealthy to breathe and is the state's most widespread air quality problem in the summer months. Particle pollution is unhealthy to breathe and contributes to haze.

For additional information about air quality issues in North Carolina, visit the DAQ Web site at www.ncair.org

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