Raquel Garcia has been fighting for years to clean up the air in her neighborhood southwest of downtown Detroit.
Living a little over a mile from the Ambassador Bridge, which thousands of freight trucks cross every day en route to the Port of Detroit, Garcia said she and her neighbors are frequently cleaning soot off their homes.
“You can literally write your name in it,” she said. “My house is completely covered.”
Her neighborhood is part of Wayne County, which is home to heavy industry, including steel plants and major car manufacturers, and suffers from some of the worst air quality in Michigan. In its 2024 State of the Air report, the American Lung Association named Wayne County one of the “worst places to live” in terms of annual exposure to fine particulate matter pollution, or PM2.5.
But Detroit, and several other Midwest cities with major shipping ports, could soon see their air quality improve as port authorities receive hundreds of millions of dollars to replace diesel equipment with cleaner technologies like solar power and electric vehicles.
Last week, the Biden administration announced $3 billion in new grants from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Ports program, which aims to slash carbon emissions and reduce air pollution at US shipping ports. More than $200 million of that funding will go to four Midwestern states that host ports along the Great Lakes: Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana.
The money, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, will not only be used to replace diesel-powered equipment and vehicles, but also to install clean energy systems and charging stations, take inventory of annual port emissions, and set plans for reducing them. It will also fund a feasibility study for establishing a green hydrogen fuel hub along the Great Lakes.
The EPA estimates that those changes will, nationwide, reduce carbon pollution in the first 10 years by more than 3 million metric tons, roughly the equivalent of taking 600,000 gasoline-powered cars off the road. The agency also projects reduced emissions of nitrous oxide and PM2.5—both of which can cause serious, long-term health complications—by about 10,000 metric tons and about 180 metric tons, respectively, during that same time period.
“Our nation’s ports are critical to creating opportunity here in America, offering good-paying jobs, moving goods, and powering our economy,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in the agency’s press release announcing the funds. “Delivering cleaner technologies and resources to US ports will slash harmful air and climate pollution while protecting people who work in and live nearby ports communities.”
Garcia, who runs the community advocacy nonprofit Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, said she’s “really excited” to see the Port of Detroit getting those funds, even though it’s just a small part of what’s needed to clean up the city’s air pollution.
“We care about the air,” she said. “There’s a lot of kids in the neighborhood where I live.”
Jumpstarting the transition to cleaner technology
Nationwide, port authorities in 27 states and territories tapped the Clean Ports funding, which they’ll use to buy more than 1,500 units of cargo-handling equipment, such as forklifts and cranes, 1,000 heavy-duty trucks, 10 locomotives, and 20 seafaring vessels, all of which will be powered by electricity or green hydrogen, which doesn’t emit CO2 when burned.
In the Midwest, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority in Ohio were awarded about $95 million each from the program, the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority in Michigan was awarded $25 million, and the Ports of Indiana will receive $500,000.
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