Last Updated on April 29, 2024 by BVN
Aryana Noroozi
While Earth Day may have come and gone, the fight for environmental equity continues as local community organizations and activists address the importance of protecting the environment all year long.
The impacts of an expanding warehouse industry are one of the top environmental equity concerns of communities in the Inland region.
Last year, a coalition of more than 60 environmental and social justice groups and organizations wrote a letter, as part of a working paper report, to Governor Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and California Department of Education Superintendent Tony Thurmond. The letter addressed warehouse growth: what they identified as one of the most critical environmental justice issues of our time.
According to the report’s findings, across the Inland Empire over 300 warehouses stand 1,000 feet or less from schools, while over 600 warehouses surround these same schools at 1,500 feet.
Warehouses are a crucial component of the global supply chain: which begins with TransPacific shipments, container sorting at the ports and movement of goods to warehouses in the Inland Empire where they are stored and then moved throughout the rest of the nation.
The letter was part of Region in Crisis: The Rationale for Public Health State of Emergency, a report co-authored by the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ), the Sierra Club San Gorgonio and Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability.
The report emphasized the detrimental impact of the rapidly growing warehouse industry in the region, which saw an increase from 229 million square feet of warehouses in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties in 1980, to 385.5 million square feet of warehouses in 2020, according to the Redford Conservancy at Pitzer College and Radical Research LLC warehouse mapping tool. Riverside and San Bernardino Counties rank as counties with the worst air quality in the nation, according to the American Lung Association.
In the year since publishing the report, one of the authors, Susan Phillips, Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pitzer College and Director of the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, said that one of her greatest concerns is local agencies continuing to facilitate warehouse development next to schools and homes.
“There is also a troubling pattern of demolishing housing or rezoning land designated for housing for industrial [land use],” she added. “This has racialized overtones in which primarily people of color are forced out of neighborhoods, are evicted, or losing out on future housing opportunities… all this in the midst of a major housing crisis.”
Black Voice News has documented the impact of the warehousing industry on the community over the last few years. From chronicling local pushback by community members to examining state intervention on behalf of warehouse building, residents across both counties are demanding environmental justice.
As local climate and environmental justice organizations like the Sierra Club and CCAEJ work to address and rectify the health impacts and economic harms of the growing logistics industry, the report offers proposed solutions to the warehousing boom.
“The Sierra Club San Gorgonio Chapter has been involved in using the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) rules for years in attempts to get city and county governments in our area to do their jobs,” said Mary Ann Ruiz. Chair of the Sierra Club San Gorgonio Chapter. “We make public comments, members and supporters show up at their city council meetings and speak against the projects in their communities, and when all else fails we litigate.”
Ruiz added that action is needed at the state level when local leaders fail their communities.
Among the key solutions and suggestions offered in the report one emphasizes the need for more state-wide air quality regulations. The report noted that although there has been progress in state and federal air quality regulations over the past 22 years, the recent surge in warehouse construction is undermining these efforts. Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), particulate matter (PM) and ozone disproportionately affect communities in close proximity to warehouses. According to the American Lung Association and CalEnviroScreen 4.0’s most recent report, the Inland Empire has the highest concentrations of ozone in the country.
Another suggested intervention from the report is the declaration of a regional warehouse moratorium of one to two years which would allow time to implement policy changes. A moratorium is a period of time that allows for expert assessment of the impact of the warehousing industry on the community.
During the moratorium, new warehouse expansion projects are paused. Once the findings and recommendations are provided to the governing body, a moratorium can be terminated. In recent years, eight cities in the region enacted a moratorium against warehousing after the community expressed concerns.
The report also calls for the identification of high exposure communities from both warehouse and industrial land uses. Once these communities have been identified, it calls for the creation of higher standards at the state level to approve projects in these zones. According to the report, in 2010, 337,445 Inland Empire residents lived within a quarter mile of a warehouse; by 2022 this number grew by 30,000 to 367,584 individuals, roughly 60% of whom are Latino.
From a legislative perspective, the report’s authors recommend the enforcement of existing state limits for campaign contributions and to prohibit developer donations to city councils or other decision-making bodies within three years of pending decisions.
Currently in effect, Senate Bill 352 requires that when a school site is being selected that any potential sources of pollution within a quarter mile of the proposed school site be surveyed and included in a risk assessment. This legislation also includes school sites within 500 meters of a busy roadway to be assessed to show that neither short- nor long-term exposure poses a significant health risk. The study recommends the bill to apply the same rules to warehouses and to extend the distance to schools within 500 meters.
Since the report’s publication over a year ago, CCAEJ has made strides in advocating for communities at further risk of displacement due to warehouse development as exemplified by their work on the ground with impacted communities, from helping them get involved at community meetings by leaving comment and gaining access to translation services, to making decisions about whether to sell their homes when approached by developers.
Highlighting its accessibility, Phillips said that a powerful tool for community-based environmental justice engagements is Warehouse CITY, an interactive cumulative impact tool that allows users to map warehouses in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, from acreage and square footage to diesel particulate matter and carbon emissions.
It is intended to be utilized by planners, municipalities, community-based organizations, and residents who are interested in community and environmental health.
“The public response has been encouraging, with much more attention to the issue and participation in communities across the Inland Empire,” Ruiz said. “The government response has been lacking, and at the local level in cities and counties it is business as usual, with many mega-projects still in approval.”
Ruiz shared that she hoped for a greater government response.
“I’ve been disappointed in the lack of response from the Governor’s office and the office of Attorney General Bonta,” she said. “We, the Sierra Club, are also feeling left out of the process with the warehouse task force group, but hopeful to be included at some point in the process.”
Phillips said that there have been few changes in terms of legislation or engagement of higher-level officials since the report’s publication but that there is now more information at hand than ever.
“We do have the ears of some politicians who are interested in new ways of thinking and framing healthier futures for residents and the planet,” she said.
Phillips added that many communities are now faced with the encroachment of warehouses.
“Not just here in Southern California, but across the state and U.S.” she said. “Our biggest success is slowly shifting the narrative, but in terms of actual change, we have seen a speeding up as opposed to a slowing down of warehousing in the region.”
A Region in Crisis II report is currently being developed and projected to be published in the summer.