Ten million dollars is up for grabs to help Florida governments to replace garbage trucks with lower-emission alternatives, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection announced Monday. Each awardee may receive funding for up to three eligible replacement trucks, to be powered by either diesel, compressed natural gas, propane or electricity, according to FDEP.
The money is from Florida's remaining share of Volkswagen settlement funds, paid by the car company to the federal government in 2016 and 2017 after Volkswagen's alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. According to civil settlements, Volkswagen sold nearly 600,000 diesel motor vehicles with devices designed to cheat federal emissions tests for nitrogen oxides or NOx. To help offset excess NOx emissions from those "trick" vehicles, Volkswagen paid nearly $3 billion into a mitigation trust fund.
States received payouts from the mitigation fund for projects to "replace diesel emission sources with cleaner technology," based on how many "trick" vehicles were registered in each state, according to the EPA. Florida's total share was $166 million, and the state still has nearly $41 million left.
This round of $10 million for lower-emission garbage trucks is available for Florida counties and municipalities, as well as private entities contracted by a local government to provide waste-collection services. Funding priority will go to places where disaster recovery efforts are underway and where communities have suffered disproportionately from severe weather events, as well as designated rural areas of opportunity, according to FDEP.
Applications are available on FDEP's website and should be submitted via email to VWMitigation@FloridaDEP.gov. The deadline to apply is 5 p.m. on Dec. 23.
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