A divided appellate court has ruled a planned Amazon cargo center at San Bernardino International Airport will not harm the environment, but a dissenting judge complained the center will endanger the health of Black and Hispanic city residents who live near the proposed airport expansion.
"This case reeks of environmental racism," said Judge Johnnie Rawlinson, of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in dissent.
The center "would not see the light of day if this project were sited anywhere near the wealthy enclave where the multibillionaire owner of Amazon resides," Rawlinson said.
U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Johnnie Rawlinson
| OpenJurist
The Feb. 24 majority decision was authored by Circuit Judge Eugene Siler, a judge from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals who was designated to serve on the panel. Ninth Circuit Judge Patrick Bumatay concurred in the decision.
The decision favored the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in a dispute with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCA), which is based in Jurupa Valley. Also challenging the FAA are the Sierra Club, the state of California and Teamsters Local 1932 in San Bernardino, as well as Local 1932 members Shana Saters and Martha Romero.
Amazon wants to build a 658,000 square-foot warehouse and two 25,000 square-foot maintenance buildings on 101 acres at the San Bernardino airport, in a zone that was once an Air Force base. Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos. The FAA studied the proposal and determined in 2019 there would be "no significant impact" on the "human environment."
The CCA and others went to court to block the project, arguing the FAA did not take a "hard look" at the potential effects of the warehouse as far as noise, air quality, socioeconomic conditions, future uses of the area, so-called "greenhouse gases" and truck traffic. The CCA further asserted the FAA too narrowly defined the area it studied.
Judge Siler determined the CCA missed on all counts.
"The CCA raises no substantial questions as to whether the Project may cause significant degradation of some environmental factor" and has "not carried its burden of showing missteps on the part of the FAA," Siler said.
"The fact that the CCA cannot identify any potential cumulative impacts that the FAA failed to consider suggests that there are none," Siler added.
Siler summed up: "We cannot conclude that a substantial question has been raised as to whether the Project may have a significant effect on the environment, or that the FAA skirted its duty of taking a 'hard look' at the environmental consequences of the Project."
In her dissent, Rawlinson started by pointing out San Bernardino County is "one of the most polluted corridors" in the country, and "not so coincidentally" is 73 percent Latino and 13 percent African-American, with 95 percent living below the poverty level.
"This conclusion (the FAA report) would be laughable if the consequences were not so deadly," Rawlinson said.
Rawlinson noted the San Bernardino Airport Authority and the state said, contrary to the FAA, the Amazon facility would have "significant" environmental impact. Rawlinson agreed with the CCA the FAA confined its study to too small an area, so, as a consequence, the agency's assessment "does not pass muster."
According to Rawlinson, the Amazon project boils down to climate change.
"Residents of the San Bernardino Valley are not disposable. Their lives matter. Our children and grandchildren are looking to us to stem this tide of pollution that is contributing to increasingly disastrous climate change. This emissions-spewing facility that disproportionately impacts communities of color and was not properly vetted is a good place to start," Rawlinson concluded.
Center for Community Action has been represented by Adriano Martinez and Yasmine Agelidis, of Earthjustice in Los Angeles, and Gregory Muren, of Earthjustice in San Francisco.
California has been represented by the California Attorney General's office.
The FAA has been represented by U.S. Justice Department lawyers Rebecca Jaffe, Justin D. Heminger, John E. Arbab, Katelin Shugart-Schmidt, Eric Grant and Jonathan D. Brightbill, as well as by FAA lawyer Joseph Manalili.
Communities for a Better Environment, of Los Angeles and People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, of Grand Terrace, both filed friend-of-the-court arguments against the Amazon project.