EPA joined with a consortium of federal, state, and local government agencies, non-profits, and industry to kick off an unprecedented $6 million effort to reduce diesel emissions from trucks, ships, locomotives, and other diesel sources along the West Coast.

Organized as the West Coast Diesel Emissions Reductions Collaborative, more than 400 interests are working together to find voluntary solutions, incentives, and shared approaches to reducing diesel pollution in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska sooner than federally mandated deadlines. Interests from British Columbia and Mexico have also joined this effort.

Eight announcements were made in San Diego, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Sacramento, San Francisco, Eugene Oregon, Portland, and Seattle, all aimed at getting voluntary diesel reductions sooner than the deadlines set by the EPA's stringent new diesel standards that begin to take effect in 2008.

Funding for the eight announcements comes from federal, state, local, non-profit, and industries all directed toward diesel pollution reduction projects along the West Coast. The collaborative's goal is to ultimately secure $100 million through this public/private partnership to address and solve the diesel pollution problems in the west.

The West Coast has numerous diesel sources from trucks traveling along the I-5 and I-99 corridors, to ships and trains along the Pacific coast, to agriculture equipment in California's Central Valley, to construction equipment operating in some of the fastest growing cities in the country, such as Los Angeles, Fresno, Seattle, and Portland.