State to Offer Construction Vehicles Exhaust Filters

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has received federal funding to retrofit highway construction equipment with exhaust filters.  Diesel engines on this equipment emit harmful pollution—including soot, which can cause lung damage.  So in areas of the state where soot is especially bad, the Cabinet will have about 60 filters on hand.   David Devers is a Cabinet spokesman.“We’re going to make them available, basically, to contractors who are using heavy equipment for roadwork, and this is pretty much the first go around, so it’s going to be interesting to see how they respond to it.”The program is voluntary, and contractors will have to match 20-percent of the filters’ cost.    Devers says filters can remove anywhere between 20 to 90 percent of the soot a vehicle emits, but he couldn’t confirm which technology the Cabinet has chosen.