AUGUSTA – More than 200 school buses across the state will be retrofitted with pollution-control equipment because of a $567,376 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The diesel school buses built after 1995 will be retrofitted with oxidation catalysts to cut exhaust, officials said.

In April, then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announced at a news conference in Portland that her agency had a $5 million congressional appropriation to help school districts make buses cleaner.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Education partnered with the Asthma Regional Council to submit an application to tap into some of the money under the Clean School Bus USA program.