Image: Inland Ports of Southern California – Warehouses, Distribution Centers, Intermodal Facilities: Impacts, Costs, and Trends, Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
In another chapter of the war between those who want to clean up the Inland Empire’s dangerously polluted air and trucking and warehousing interests, environmental and community groups have sued the State of California to stop it from building new truck lanes that would make a bad situation worse.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Friends of the Northern San Jacinto Valley and Residents for a Livable Moreno Valley, the “additional truck lanes would facilitate development of projects like the adjacent World Logistics Center, a sprawling 4.2 square mile warehouse complex that would add 14,000 daily truck trips, worsen already poor air quality and harm wildlife in the nearby San Jacinto Wildlife Area.”
Separate lawsuits are moving through the courts to a stop to the World Logistics Center, a project approved after the developer spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund local politicians, and
The health situation in the Inland Empire is already horrific. As Penny Newman of the MFN member organization Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice described in Inland Ports of Southern California – Warehouses, Distribution Centers, Intermodal Facilities: Impacts, Costs, and Trends, diesel exhaust from freight transportation has polluted the air Inland Empire air so badly that it has the highest level of ozone and particulate matter in the US. As a result, children born in San Bernardino County or Riverside will be exposed to as many carcinogens in the first 12 days of their life as most people are in 70 years.
Underlying all of this is a stunning story of malfeasance and dirty deals, a “story of how our whole consumer economy has been transformed, bringing lung-stunting pollution and, in some cases, political corruption.” (Source: Warehouse Empire)
For more information, check out the news articles, press release, and court filing linked below:
MORENO VALLEY: Suit filed to halt Badlands truck lanes, The Press-Enterprise
Lawsuit Filed Against Polluting Freeway-expansion Project in Riverside County – More Lanes Will Mean More Trucks, More Pollution, Climate Impacts, Press Release
Petition for Writ of Mandate, Legal filing
For Background, see:
MORENO VALLEY: Warehouse battle continues in court, The Press-Enterprise
Warehouse Empire, Buzzfeed
Inland Ports of Southern California – Warehouses, Distribution Centers, Intermodal Facilities: Impacts, Costs, and Trends, Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice