: [EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to include funding credit to the Pulitzer Center.]
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Americans who live near shipping ports breathe some of the dirtiest air - emissions from ships, trucks and their cargo. Now the federal government is offering communities billions of dollars to transform their ports from diesel to electric. Chris Burrell from member station GBH reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK ENGINES RUMBLING)
CHRIS BURRELL, BYLINE: On a four-lane street in Newark, N.J., Kim Gaddy is watching, hearing and smelling all the trucks, many of them hauling those 40-foot-long container boxes you see everywhere, a reality she and her neighbors are forced to live with.
KIM GADDY: All of the industry and all the trucks - all the pollution - they can't escape from it.
BURRELL: Gaddy runs the South Ward Environmental Alliance in Newark.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHILDREN PLAYING)
BURRELL: This school playground, teeming with kids, sits just a block away from her office, a reminder of why she turned into an activist decades ago. All three of her children faced asthma. Two relatives died of asthma attacks.
GADDY: You know people's lives are being lost. One in four children in the city of Newark have asthma. We have one of the highest rates of premature heart attacks. And, like - and it's not by happenstance.
BURRELL: Yale University researchers backed up that data in their recent health study of port communities - more heart disease and trouble breathing, with a bigger impact on people of color. The EPA confirms the link. And the Biden administration is pouring billions into electrifying ports to reduce emissions. Gaddy is thrilled.
GADDY: If we're successful in obtaining this money, that we will be able to do so many things that we've been fighting for for the last eight to 10 years.
BURRELL: The Port Authority of New York-New Jersey oversees nearly all the shipping traffic here. And it's now on board with environmental justice groups like Gaddy's. The agency recently hired Zach McCue. He spent years fighting New Jersey pollution and knows the authority's track record of not listening to the community.
ZACH MCCUE: The idea that decisions aren't made for the community; secisions are made with the community's input and by the community is huge. And for many, many, many years and decades, that has not always been the case.
BURRELL: McCue credits the EPA for its insistence that applicants like this port authority must team up with community groups. It's a potentially transformative moment, he says. The authority is seeking the highest level of federal funding allowed, about a half billion dollars for zero emissions infrastructure and equipment.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY BEEPING)
BURRELL: Out on the Newark docks, diesel still rules, helping power these giant, long-legged machines that look like those "Star Wars" AT-AT walkers that glide back and forth from a massive container ship. Ships are offloaded and onloaded here nonstop, 24/7.
REGINA TOWNES: The ships - they cannot shut down. They have to keep them running. So it's constant pollution coming from their smokestacks.
BURRELL: Regina Townes is a former longshorewoman from Newark. She worked these docks for 31 years. She blames her high blood pressure on the job and quit after deciding the good paycheck wasn't worth her health.
TOWNES: In the summer, when you wash - go home and wash, and you get all this black stuff on your skin from the machinery riding over or just what's flying in the air. We breathing that in. You know, all these are silent killers.
BURRELL: Townes now works alongside her friend Gaddy as an organizer. Both hope to emulate California ports that have long required electric power. Industry and city leaders in Newark say solar power and alternative fuels could reduce emissions, too. The tension is balancing those calls for reducing pollution with the main job of the port - commerce, revenue and hundreds of thousands of local jobs. Eric Pennington oversees the city of Newark's budget and says you can do both.
ERIC PENNINGTON: The port itself is a driver of the economy here, and we have an expectation that it will grow, and it will grow in an environmentally conscious way.
BURRELL: Labor unions like the Longshoremen say it's past time for America's ports to cut back on diesel particulate matter. And residents nearby are tired of living in what they call a diesel death zone. They're also desperate for change. The federal grants that may come their way could mark an important start.
For NPR News, I'm Chris Burrell.
FADEL: This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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