The Allegheny County Health Department has lost out on more than half of a $2 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air quality program operating grant because the county didn't provide the necessary local matching funds.

The federal money, part of an annual grant, could have been used to pay for employee salaries, hire additional employees, buy monitoring equipment, and hire contractors and consultants for the air program.

"There's no question we could have used the money for a variety of things in the air quality program," said Dr. Bruce Dixon, Health Department executive director. "It's a basic operating grant from the EPA, but it requires a certain amount of local money to match.

"I've made the argument multiple times that we need more money to bring more in."

County Council President Rich Fitzgerald, D-Squirrel Hill, said losing the air program grant money is disturbing, especially in light of the Pittsburgh region's ranking earlier this week by the American Lung Association as having the nation's second dirtiest air.

"That we're not doing everything we can in terms of monitoring and enforcement and cleaning up the air is an issue that we are going to look into," Mr. Fitzgerald said.

The EPA allocates air program operating funds to the county Health Department, but requires the county to provide a match. The unmatched portion of the grant is retained by the EPA.

The county has lost federal funding before for the same reason.

"The grant amount has gone down some over the years but most of the money is still initially available," Dr. Dixon said. "But if we don't spend what's allocated, they're going to re-prioritize their spending in the future."

Mr. Fitzgerald said there is about $6 million in the county's Clean Air Fund from fines collected from air polluters that might be able to be used for the match.

Dr. Dixon said a similar situation occurs because of the county's failure to match a state Department of Health grant that's based on the local per capita appropriation for Health Department programs.

The county, with a population of approximately 1.3 million, spends about $4 per capita and so gets about $5 million from the state Department of Health.

If it spent $6 per capita, it could receive about $2.6 million more.