Newell Rubbermaid's new 407,412-square-foot West Coast distribution facility, shown here in October, is part of what will be an 8,500-acre transportation hub in Victorville, delivering shipments by truck, rail and air. It is at the Southern California Logistics Airport, the former George Air Force base.

Dozens of Inland activists are heading west this Friday to attend a two-day conference looking at the impacts of trade, ports and the good movements, something we know a lot about here in the Inland region.

We know about that here because we often have to sit at railroad crossings while cargo-hauling trains inch by, and we see all the freeway-close warehouses where the trucks drop off the goods. Activists here don't like the added pollution the trucks and trains bring to an area already suffering from some of the nation's worst air pollution.

So some 65 folks from our area will be going to the "Moving Forward" conference in Carson, said Josie Gaytan, a community organizer with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, an Inland group based in Glen Avon. The conference is sponsored by a collaboration known as The Trade, Health & Environment Impact Project, which the Glen Avon group is part of.

With talk of a possible "Inland port" which would bring more train traffic here to warehouses where goods from the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports would be sorted, activists are more concerned. Phil Pitchford, our transportation writer and blogger, wrote a story earlier this year in which experts somewhat dismissed that idea but said it still could work using a group of smaller facilities sprinkled around the two Inland counties.

One of the goals of The Impact Project is to ensure that talk about reducing health, environmental and community impacts is not lost when folks are developing policies about and planning for transportation and goods movement.

1 Comments

Karen Bradford on November 26, 2007 11:07 AM said:

Thanks for posting this information, Jennifer.

Our federal, state and county government allows many decisions to be made --- such as idling trains, only one example as a poorly regulated diesel-emission source that effects Inland residents --- without our input and by people who don't have to live with the resulting pollution and traffic congestion that degrades our quality of life.

Conferences like this one and the work of these organiztions help educate our residents about what is happening to us, whether we know it or not. I've lived in Mira Loma for 28 years and am horrified at what has happened to our nice community that has changed from a rural environment to warehouses and congestion, but my husband and I are staying to help guide what is important in our community.

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