(From left to right) Lisa P. Jackson, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Long Beach
Mayor Bob Foster, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at the
Port of Long Beach. (Photo by Albert Sabaté)

The Environmental Protection Agency announced $26.5 million in Recovery Act grants to reduce diesel emissions in ports and throughout the South Coast Air Basin.

Federal, state, and local officials spoke at the Port of Long Beach on Thursday.

The California Air Resources Board will receive $8.8 million. The Port of Long Beach will receive about $4 million. The Port of Los Angeles will receive almost $2 million. And the California Department of Transportation, or CalTrans, will receive just under $1 million.

"These grants will help upgrade and retrofit hundreds of vehicles and machinery both working in these ports and traveling through your communities every day to clean diesel technology," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said at Long Beach Harbor. "That will help create and save jobs here, while significantly reducing the health and environmental burdens that dirty diesel emissions."

The cumulative impact of these grants will be a reduction of approximately 880 tons of carbon dioxide, 450 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 25 tons of particulate matter.

"When I came into office, there was this belief that you could only protect environment or the economy. That you had to chose. [There was the belief that] when you live by a port, ports are dirty, polluters," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"We don't have to accept that. We don't have to accept the status quo, where people get ill, have premature death. None of those things we have to accept, we can do something about it," he said.

Schwarzenegger said that the environment and the economy are not mutually exclusive.

Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster agreed that state leaders can and should choose both.

"I think that we can demonstrate in Long Beach and Los Angeles that you can do that, and we have done it," Foster said.

The EPA estimates that "clean diesel" investments can generate up to $13 of public health benefits for every dollar spent.

This is an amazing return on our investments, said Jackson.

Scientists estimate that thousands of Californians die every year from diesel emissions, said Dr. Joseph Lyou, executive director of the California Environmental Rights Alliance and governor's appointee to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

"And these victims of murder by diesel are not randomly spread across this state.  They're concentrated in communities around these ports, and trucking [routes]," said Lyou.

He said that the partnership provided by these grants would save lives.

"It's the kind of health care reform all of us can get behind and support," Lyou said.

Although Foster was positive and grateful about the announcement, he said it really isn't much and charged the federal government for "abdicating" responsibilities to the ports.

"These are national assets. Over 40 percent of all goods imported into U.S. come through these two ports, and yet we get woefully little money from the federal government for infrastructure improvements and environmental clean-up," said Foster.

Foster hoped this would be the start of long-term cooperation.

"What we need to concentrate on here is being clean and efficient. And that's what we're going to do," Foster said.