Environmental groups line up to stop World Logistics Center

The mega-industrial project approved in Moreno Valley figures to trigger a spate of lawsuits, but anyone wishing to file one needs to work quickly. It’s not clear whether the project’s opponents can stop the development or merely force a repeat of the approval process.

The Moreno Valley city council and planning commission have given their approval to the World Logistics Center, the proposed mega-logistics project that would be developed on the city’s east end.

Now, it’s time for the lawyers turn to weigh in on the project, which has divided residents of Moreno Valley like no other issue in the city’s 30-year history.

At least two environmental groups are preparing lawsuits that would block the project for alleged multiple violations of the California Environmental Quality Act, and the head of one of those organizations says she expects at least two more suits to be filed after that.

“I think we’ll end up with four or five suits and at some point they’ll be folded into one,” said Penny Newman, executive director of the Jurupa Valley-based Center for Community Action & Environmental Justice, an activist group that covers the Inland Empire.

“At least that’s what I hope happens. But we are definitely preparing our own suit, and we’re prepared to go to court.”

Iddo Benzeevi, the project’s developer, said immediately after the council approved the project on Aug. 19 that he expected several lawsuits to be filed. He declined to say how he would respond to them or what his own legal strategy might be.

Benzeevi, president of Highland Fairview in Moreno Valley, presented the World Logistics Center as a “historic opportunity” for Moreno Valley, one that will create 20,000 jobs over the course of a 20 to 30-year buildout.

He called logistics “the new manufacturing” because of the high-paying jobs it can create, and he accused critics of the project – which would cover 40.6 million square feet, about the size of 700 football fields – of exaggerating the environmental damage it might cause.

Rejecting the World Logistics Center would mean that, over time, Moreno Valley would lose industrial development to other Inland Empire cities, and in the process lose out on years of economic benefits, Benzeevi said.

“We’re the gateway to the United State’s, and one of the fastest growing economies the world,” Benzeevi argued during multiple public hearings. “Mostly because of where we’re located, this is an opportunity to do something historic. If not for us, for our children. We all want a better future for our children.”

Newman, who has spent nearly 30 years fighting the glut of warehouse-distribution centers in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said she wasn’t persuaded by Benzeevi’s arguments, or by the supporters who argued for it during a special council meeting that took three nights to complete.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and this is the worst environmental impact report I’ve ever seen,” Newman said. “They’ve done a very shoddy job with it. It ignores, or tries to minimize, how much impact it would have on the region. The part that deals with air quality is laughable.”

The report also focuses too much on Moreno Valley, and doesn’t adequately address the impact the World Logistics Center would have on nearby communities like Riverside and Mira Loma, Newman said.

“There are so many things wrong with it its hard to categorize them all,” Newman said. “It has content problems and it has procedural problems.”

By law, any lawsuit must be filed no later than one month after the council approved the project. The Center for Community Action, which plans to argue that the entire environmental impact report should be redone, will file its suit in Riverside Superior Court, Newman said.

The proposed site, south of the 60 Freeway between Redlands Boulevard and Gillman Springs Road, is a poor location for any industrial project, Newman said.

“It’s going to add thousands of truck trips a day on the 60 Freeway, but Caltrans says it doesn’t have the money to make the necessary improvements to handle the extra traffic,” Newman said. “It’s only going there because [Highland Fairview] happens to own that land.”

Highland Fairview officials could not be reached for comment.

The Sierra Club is opposed to the World Logistics Center primarily because part of the project will be next door to the San Jacinto Wildlife Preserve, said George Hague, conservation chairman of the environmental group’s Moreno Valley chapter.

“We’re working on a suit, but the problem is we only have 30 days to put it together,” Hague said. “At this point we’re making sure that everything [in the lawsuit] is being done correctly.”

Much of that lawsuit will be based on objections to the project raised by the California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, both of which found problems with the environmental impact report, Hague said.

If the Sierra Club has its way the World Logistics Center will never happen, although that may no longer be a realistic goal now that the project has been approved twice by the city, Hague admitted.

“Ideally, we would stop it,” said Hague, a Moreno Valley resident for 40 years. “If we can’t stop it, we can at least force them to make it better. But our goal is to stop it, because this project will be a nuisance that no one should have to suffer.

“The city council is supposed to protect the health and safety of the citizenry, but that’s not what it’s doing in this case.”

Probably the best opponents of the World Logistics Center can hope for now is to force changes that would make it more environmentally acceptable, Moreno Valley resident Tom Thornsley said.

“What’s wrong with the environmental impact report has to be corrected,” said Thornsley, who spoke in opposition to the project at both the city council and planning commission hearings. “Our problem is that Iddo has done a great public relations job getting people behind this thing. We couldn’t come up with the money to match him.”

Opponents could also get a referendum on the local ballot, but that idea has generated little enthusiasm.

“We would have to gather around 9,000 or 10,000 signatures,” Thornsley said. “That would be a lot of work, and we wouldn’t have much time.”