EPA awards Central States Air Resource Agencies Association $560,000 grant

The Central States Air Resource Agencies Association (CenSARA) recently won a grant worth more than $560,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which it will use in its work to promote air quality across its nine member states.

The non-profit organization is based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and takes a regional approach to improving air quality, combatting air pollution that move across state boundaries. CenSARA also provides support to its member states in their air pollution-control efforts, offering technical support to state agencies, providing training and project management services to states implementing air quality programs and fostering an exchange between states of cost-effective measures to combat air pollution.

CenSARA’s work targets the problems generated by interstate air pollution transportation, which is the cumulative outcome of local emissions and emissions from upwind sources found in the air quality in downwind states and communities.

This transport not only impacts local air quality and public health, it also affects the downwind states’ abilities to comply with federal air quality standards. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA and individual states to assist those downwind states in maintaining air quality standards by addressing the transportation of air pollution.