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A warehouse-building project in Southern California was halted last week over mistakes in its environmental impact report, despite the fact that more than 100 homes have already been razed to create space for the site.
The project involves building more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space in the community of Bloomington, an unincorporated part of San Bernardino County. But according to the Los Angeles Times, a judge ruled last week that the county review of the project didn’t meet state law requiring public notification of potential environmental risks. The judge concluded that the project must stop while the county does a new environmental impact report.
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The project, from Howard Industrial Partners, was first approved in 2022. The proposal included removing 117 homes, and according to the Times more than 100 of those properties have already been purchased and demolished.
However, in the years since the project was approved community and environmental groups have sued, arguing that the project violates various state regulations, the Times reported. The Times piece adds that the project is expected to have significant impacts on air quality, though it should also bring jobs to the area.
An earlier report from the Times frames the project as part of an evolution in the region from a rural and agricultural economy toward a logistics and shipping hub. The project — which is to be called the Bloomington Business Park and will sprawl across 213 acres — is also a response to the growth of e-commerce, which has intensified shipping through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the west. Those ports are a major entry point into the U.S. for foreign goods, and those goods often then flow through warehouses in San Bernardino County on their way to other parts of the country.
The rise of shipping in the region has created jobs, but also led to concerns about air and noise pollution from constant streams of semi-trucks. The Times reports also note that these changes have divided communities, with some willingly selling their homes to make way for warehouses even as others lament the erosion of the area’s pre-existing culture.
The ruling that halted work on the Bloomington Business Park last week runs more than 100 pages, the Times reported, and specifically found San Bernardino County violated the California Environmental Quality Act.