State Attorney General Xavier Becerra has sued the Federal Aviation Administration, San Bernardino International Airport Authority and Hillwood Enterprises over the recent approval of a massive air cargo logistics center currently under construction at the former Norton Air Force Base.
Joined by local labor and environmental advocates at a news conference Friday, Feb. 21, at Indian Springs High School in San Bernardino, Becerra said that throughout the project’s approval process, the three agencies ignored significant health risks a nearly 660,000-square-foot sorting facility for around-the-clock air and ground cargo operations poses to the surrounding San Bernardino-Muscoy community.
Late last year, after finding the privately-funded Eastgate project met federal requirements and would not significantly affect the quality of the environment, the FAA gave the logistics center its blessing.
The suit, filed Thursday, asks the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside the FAA’s approval of the project “as arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law.”
“This large airport expansion project will have a significant impact on the local community and families who call this area home,” Becerra said Friday. “These families are already disproportionately burdened by pollution. … In California, we can’t have business as usual hurt distressed communities in our state. We have a responsibility to provide justice, including environmental justice, to all of California’s communities.
“None of us,” Becerra continued, “whether the California Department of Justice, the FAA, the San Bernardino Airport Authority or the developer of the project have the right to turn (our) backs on the families in this area, nor can we turn our backs on the rule of law.”
Speaking Friday three months after detailing inconsistencies in two environmental assessments of the Eastgate project, Becerra reiterated the importance of crafting a comprehensive environmental review of a project expected to bring 26 daily flights and 500 daily truck trips to an area already vulnerable to pollution.
As he did in his November letter to the FAA, Becerra on Friday called on the federal agency to produce such a report as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
“Residents have been saying these concerns for years now and nobody’s been listening,” said Andrea Vidaurre, a policy analyst for the Jurupa Valley-based Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. “So this really encapsulates not only what the residents of San Bernardino are feeling, but what residents are feeling all across the region. Development at the expense of our health cannot happen anymore.”
Set for a 101-acre lot west of Victoria Avenue and south of Third Street, the Eastgate project is expected to provide about 4,000 jobs and generate millions of dollars within five years, airport officials have said.
When the facility opens, as many as 12 flights are expected each day, with that figure increasing to 26 by 2025.
Amazon is a rumored tenant.
“We understand this project will bring jobs to the community,” Becerra said. “Our intent has never been to stop this project. It has always been to make sure (that), moving forward, this project takes the community’s well-being into account.
“No parent,” Becerra continued, “would want to send their child to school knowing that the air quality they breathe will be polluted. And parents here in San Bernardino shouldn’t be forced to make that choice because the FAA chose not to play by the rules.”
Michael Burrows, executive director of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, said by phone Friday the agency has received and will continue to review the legal filing.
Last month, scores protestors assembled inside Hillwood’s Ontario office to demand the Texas-based master developer add a Community Benefits Agreement to the Eastgate project.
The mutually-beneficial pact, protestors said, would resemble a similar agreement reached in 2004 ahead of LAX’s $11 billion expansion, guaranteeing living-wage jobs, mitigation measures on air quality impacts and other community standards.
In San Bernardino, local labor and environmental advocates have contested assertions by John Magness, Hillwood’s senior vice president and West Coast market leader, that including such an agreement for Eastgate would violate FAA grant assurances and deed restrictions.
“The community is fed up and tired of being taken advantage of inside and outside of these facilities,” Vidaurre said. “It’s the same people that work inside these facilities and build these facilities who are living here and enough is enough. … We know as a community we are not being represented accurately and being respected and given what we should, the basic needs everyone is entitled to.
“We want to know what the actual impacts are from this project,” Vidaurre added. “We need to understand what’s coming.”
