Diesel
- Take Action to Clean Up Dirty Diesel Engines |
Help clean-up dirty diesel engines
Whether you are a parent, fleet manager, planning official or policymaker, you can take action to reduce diesel pollution!!!
1. Contact your local school district or school board.
- Encourage them to adopt an idling reduction policy, saving young lungs and conserving fuel. Print out and
distribute our anti-idling
fact sheet (PDF) and sample policy.
- Encourage your school district to
use cleaner
fuels (PDF) and install pollution controls
on the fleet, including closed crankcase ventilation systems to eliminate engine exhaust from penetrating the cabins of school buses.
- Encourage your school district to
apply for grants to retrofit their fleet. Check out the Ohio EPA’s Diesel School Bus Grant Program for deadlines
2. Contact your local public transit fleet.
3. Contact your local, state, and federal governments.
- Tell them to adopt policies to reduce diesel fine particulate matter emissions 40 percent by the year 2012, 55 percent by 2015, and 70 percent by 2020. If all states adopted this goal, 100,000 lives could be saved between now and 2030. See Clean Air Task Force's Report Diesel and Health in America (PDF) for more information.
- This goal could be accomplished by a combination of actions at the local, state and federal level.
Local efforts should include:
- Fleets owned/contracted by local governments (garbage trucks, etc.) required to cleanup with best available control technologies.
- Local governments adjusting contracts to prefer clean fleet projects.
State efforts should include:
- Ohio establishing a statewide idling regulation with enforcement requirements.
- Ohio developing a statewide diesel cleanup program, similar to the Texas TERP program, to provide information and a dedicated funding source for local governments and private fleets to clean up.
- Ohio developing a revolving loan program to facilitate the installation of anti-idling hardware.
- Diesel cleanup projects in the State Implementation Plan to meet federal air standards.
- The Ohio General Assembly continuing funding for the Ohio EPA Diesel School Bus Retrofit Grant program.
- Adjustment of contract specifications requiring cleanup of trucks and construction equipment used in public works projects.
- Ohio developing a network of truck stop electrification sites across the state to give long-haul truckers a way to power their rigs overnight without running their engines.
- Ohio Department of Transportation working with local metropolitan planning organizations to award a portion of Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) monies for cost-effective, diesel retrofit projects.
Federal efforts should include:
- Congress fully funding the Diesel Emission Reduction Act at $200 million per year.
- U.S. EPA finalizing the marine and locomotive rule.
- U.S. EPA creating an engine rebuild rule for long-haul trucks.
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