EPA funds * USA - Retrofits for Mexican-owned trucks through Arizona

"... He can’t imagine the federal government spending U.S. tax money to help businesses that compete with his trucking operation..."

Nogales,AZ,USA -Land Line Magazine, by Charlie Morasch -14 April 2011: -- Sonny Brown has trucked for 30 years. The Tennessee resident spent years developing his niche hauling cars and other freight on his drop deck trailer, which he spent three years and $50,000 building... Brown was outraged when he learned this week that federal taxes paid by U.S. citizens and businesses are being doled out to many Mexican-owned trucking companies along the Nogales, AZ, border... The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is funding emission retrofits for many Mexican-owned trucks through the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. As of this week, the program had funded between 65 and 70 retrofits, which cost between $1,200 and $1,500 per unit... Mark Shaffer, a spokesman with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, told Land Line Magazine that regardless of the politics in ongoing cross-border trucking debates, U.S. residents in Nogales, AZ, and in neighboring Nogales, Mexico, are bearing the brunt of old trucks that frequently must idle... For his part, Brown said he can’t imagine the federal government spending U.S. tax money to help businesses that compete with his trucking operation...   (Photo from roadtraffic-technology: Border crossing at Nogales, Arizona)