Dear Sang,

It’s been a rough couple weeks for warehouse developers in the Inland Empire.

Two weeks ago a San Bernardino Superior Court overturned the county’s approval of a massive warehouse complex on more than 2 million acres in the community of Bloomington.

Then on Sunday Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that reins in warehouse development statewide by tightening building standards and restricting diesel truck routes in neighborhoods. 

The new law is likely to have a big impact in the Inland Empire, which already includes 4,000 warehouses that sprawl over nearly 40 square miles. Those facilities bring jobs, but also air pollution, noise and traffic.

Environmental activists applauded the court case reversing the Bloomington warehouse approval.

Developers of the Bloomington warehouse complex proposed building three new distribution centers, including a cavernous facility of more than a million square feet. Their plan involved buying and demolishing more than 100 homes.

A coalition of nonprofits sued San Bernardino County and the developer in 2022, saying officials missed the mark on environmental standards. On Sept. 17 Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez agreed. He overturned the project approval and its environmental impact report, ruling that it failed to offer reasonable alternatives or properly analyze impacts on air quality, noise, energy and greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are very happy that the judge has looked at all the evidence and agreed” the environmental review was inadequate, said Alondra Mateo, a community organizer with the San Bernardino-based People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, which sued to stop the project.

The demolition of homes that carved away a swath of the community goes beyond typical development concerns, Mateo said: “It’s not just an environmental impact; it’s a cultural impact, it’s a mental health impact.” 

Then on Sunday Newsom approved the warehouse law authored by Inland Empire Democratic Assemblymembers Eloise Gómez Reyes and Juan Carillo. The law passed in the final hours of the legislative session in August, provoking criticism from all sides.

While advocates for the logistics industry panned the law as a job-killer, community groups say its public health protections aren’t strict enough.

Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, described the law as bad policy “created in a smoke-filled room without experts.” He predicted it will hurt jobs in the Inland Empire and other parts of Southern California.

Environmental groups weren’t any happier. The law requires warehouse loading docks be set back 300 to 500 feet from to sensitive sites, including homes, schools and playgrounds.

That’s not enough of a buffer to protect nearby residents, Mateo said, arguing that the ideal distance should be about one kilometer, which is more than 3,280 feet.

Reyes has said the law offers a starting point that local governments can expand on to protect public health. Mateo maintained it gives developers an out, enabling them to comply with the letter of the law by meeting minimum limits.

Lawmakers acknowledged the law will require amendments. The critics are ready to go. Industry groups say they’ll press for more flexible rules, while environmental groups want stricter ones.

“If anything we’re going to push even harder,” Mateo said.

The Line Fire has flared up again nearly a month after it started, forcing a new round of evacuations for some San Bernardino Mountain communities. This week several communities near Big Bear received evacuation orders, including Seven Oaks and Angelus Oaks.  CalFire warned of an “immediate threat to life” and directed residents to leave immediately. The Boulder Bay community and the Big Bear Lake areas of Moonridge, Sugarloaf and south Erwin Lake also got evacuation warnings. The renewed evacuations came as the fire appeared to be coming under control, with 76 percent containment at nearly 44,000 acres Tuesday. 

More than 160 years after slavery ended in the U.S., California will apologize for its role in racial injustice. CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry reported that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill introduced by members of the The California Legislative Black Caucus requiring a state apology for segregation, discrimination and unequal treatment of African Americans in California. It was part of a package of legislation that would require reparations to Black Californians descended from enslaved people. And it followed a bitter setback in the summer. In late August two other key bills aimed at creating an agency to oversee reparations payments stalled, fueling a dispute between the Black caucus and other reparations advocates.

California has created a Salton Sea Conservancy to improve public health and ecological recovery of the blighted inland lake. On Friday Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill by state Sen. Steve Padilla to establish the conservancy to restore the highly saline inland sea, which straddles Imperial and Riverside Counties. The sea, which is California’s largest lake, is a study in contrasts: a hotspot for biodiversity and yet an agricultural sink that becomes more toxic as the water recedes. The new law tasks the conservancy with managing projects to protect wildlife, improve water quality at the sea and reduce its health effects on nearby communities, which have high rates of asthma. Despite the state budget deficit, the conservancy launches with big dollars attached, including $250 million from the federal Inflation Reduction Act, $60 million from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and another $170 million if California voters pass Proposition 4, a water and wildfire bond measure.

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For more Inland Empire news and live updates on the upcoming election, make sure to join us in Riverside next month as we bring our Voter Guide to life. We'll break down, analyze, and answer your questions about this year’s ballot propositions. The event takes place at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9, at the Cheech, 3581 Mission Inn Avenue Riverside. You can register here. 

And please add my email to your contacts:  inlandempire@calmatters.org

Thanks for reading,