Coalition Wants Two-Year Moratorium on Inland Empire Warehouses

A coalition of more than 60 environmental, labor, community and academic groups is calling for a moratorium of up to two years on new warehouse development in Southern California’s Inland Empire, demanding in an open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom that the governor declare the market’s 1B SF warehouse sprawl a “public health emergency.”

The letter, which called the exponential warehouse growth in Inland Empire “one of the most critical environmental justice issues of our time,” summarizes the findings of a working paper entitled “A Region in Crisis: The Rationale for a Public Health State of Emergency in the Inland Empire.”

According to the paper, the logistics traffic from Inland Empire’s growing network of more than 4,000 warehouses generates more than 200 million truck trips annually—at a rate of more than 600K per day—spewing more than 15 billion pounds of carbon dioxide, 30 billion pounds of nitrous oxide and 300K pounds of diesel particulate matter annually into the nation’s most polluted air.

The study said the industrial footprint in San Bernardino and Riverside counties—the two counties that make up Inland Empire, which stretches from the Los Angeles city limits to the Arizona border—is increasing at five times the rate of population growth in the region.

The additional 170M SF of warehouses under development in Inland Empire will yield a 10% increase in these emissions, the study projected.

Noting that more than 300 warehouses in Inland Empire are within 1,000 feet of nearly 140 schools—a number that doubles to 600 if you expand the radius to 1,500 feet—the study said that the number of unhealthy air quality days in San Bernardino County rose from about 15% in 2019 to nearly 20% in 2020.

Census tracts with the heaviest industrial logistics footprints in the two-county region have asthma rates as high 20% of the population, the study said.

According to the paper, diesel exhaust is responsible for 70% of the total cancer risk from air pollution; the study said the cancer risk in the Ontario warehouse “giga-cluster”—the densest industrial development in Inland Empire—is in the 95^th percentile. The region as a whole has the highest concentrations of ozone in the US, according to the American Lung Association.

“A regional moratorium—or temporary halt in warehouse construction—is required to address the gaps in current legislation that allow for continued building of warehouses despite significant health impacts that are currently deemed unavoidable. Without such a pause, the health, efficiency, and viability of the Inland Empire community health, environment, and economy are threatened,” the coalition’s letter to Newsom said.

The letter also called for the approval of future warehouse developments to be tied to “real-time rather than projected” electrification of logistics trucking fleets, suggesting that “no further warehouse construction be allowed in [Inland Empire] until the fleet is 20% electrified.”

In the densest industrial zones, the proposed development ban would not lift until 50% of fleets are electrified. The paper estimates that full electrification of trucking fleets in Southern California will not be achieved before 2045.

The letter was signed by a bevy of environmental, academic and labor organizations, including the Sierra Club, Breathe Southern California, Teamsters Local 1932, United Auto Workers, Pitzer College, Azusa Pacific University, League of Women Voters (Riverside Chapter), the Center for Biological Diversity and League of United Latin American Citizens de Inland Empire.

Nearly a dozen Inland Empire communities have initiated temporary warehouse moratoriums in the past year as the region’s warehouse sprawl—which has consumed most of the large available tracts in the Western Inland Empire—spreads to the High Desert towns in the Eastern half.

Several activist groups that have formed during the growing NIMBY movement opposing the expansion of Inland Empire’s warehouse sprawl, including the groups known a Concerned Neighbors of Bloomington, the South Fontana Concerned Citizens and Clean and Green Pomona, were among the signers of the letter to Newsom.