Fontana and state Attorney General Rob Bonta have settled a lawsuit filed last summer challenging the city’s approval of a 206,000-square-foot warehouse at Slover and Oleander avenues adjacent to Jurupa Hills High School.
At a news conference Monday, April 18, in downtown Los Angeles, Bonta called the settlement “innovative” in how it addresses environmental injustices in warehouse development – and not just in the Inland Empire.
Chiefly, the pact announced Monday required Fontana, which in recent years has approved several dozen warehouses in the southern part of town, to recently adopt “the most stringent warehouse ordinance in the state with dozens of new requirements for warehouse projects” seeking City Council approval.
Flanked by community advocates Mary Ann Ruiz, chair of the Sierra Club San Gorgonio Chapter, and Liz Sena, a South Fontana resident and founder of the South Fontana Concerned Citizens Coalition, Bonta called the pact “a win for everyone.”
The outcome, Bonta added, is “a good reminder that one person, one working mom and a community leader from Fontana can improve the lives not just in her neighborhood, her community, but with this new model, for millions of people in California.”
In a statement Monday, Fontana officials said “air quality and responsible development have long been a priority of the Fontana City Council.” In recent months, they added, the body adopted the Industrial Commerce Center Sustainability Standards Ordinance, which “ensures that all industrial development within the city exceeds all federal and state environmental standards for warehouses and freight operations.”
“We are in agreement with Attorney General Bonta,” Mayor Acquanetta Warren said in the statement, “this ordinance should serve as a model for other local governments across the State.
“We are proud to be leading the way once again.”
The Slover and Oleander Warehouse Facility Project is to be built across the street from a low-income residential neighborhood near Citrus and Jurupa Hills high schools and Fontana Adult School.
With 22 truck doors, the facility is expected to generate approximately 114 daily truck trips when around-the-clock operations begin.
Filed in July in San Bernardino Superior Court, the state’s lawsuit claimed that Fontana leaders erred in concluding the warehouse would not have any significant environmental impacts on the community when they denied a community-led appeal a month earlier and approved the development.
The Sierra Club, a local environmental justice group, also took legal action over the decision.
Once entered by the court, the settlement announced Monday will resolve both cases.
As a result of the pact, Indianapolis-based developer Duke Realty must implement substantial mitigation measures both during and after construction to minimize the impacts of the project on the surrounding community. The company must also put $210,000 into a community benefits fund, Bonta said, with $160,000 marked for the purchase of five years worth of top-rated air filters for up to 1,750 nearby households.
The other $50,000, Bonta added, will go to Jurupa Hills High to enhance landscaping buffers along its property line.
“Today is a great day for the city of Fontana and its residents,” Sena said Monday. “It marks the culmination of our community’s efforts coming together to protect our city’s most precious resources, our children.
“Although we are saddened that the warehouse involved in this lawsuit will move forward, being built less than 100 feet from a high school,” Sena added, “we are encouraged by the results that have come from this courageous and just lawsuit.”
In addition to the ordinance adopted by Fontana and the mitigation measures to be followed by Duke Realty, the South Coast Air Quality Management District has announced a process to revise its California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, guidance for analyzing cumulative air quality impacts, Bonta said Monday.
Such a revision, Bonta said, would require cities to consider existing burdens associated with nearby pollution sources when weighing projects – warehouses especially – in disadvantaged areas. This would encourage city leaders to find new places for such projects, thus minimizing impacts on residents’ health.
“I’m so inspired by Liz,” Bonta said, “and a community rising up to call out injustice, put out the call for change, to be ambitious about wanting something better, wanting something more, something different and to making it happen, through courage and resilience, organization and fight.
“We were inspired by that and proud to join those efforts here.”