A section of Highway 99 in south Fresno will be expanded. These residents want it stopped
Panfilo Cerrillo has lived in south central Fresno coming on seven decades and wonders how much longer he has left.
“I’m soon to be 68, if I make it that far — if I can breathe that long,” Cerrillo said during a news conference last week outside the Friends of Calwa building on Jensen Avenue.
“With all this development going on out there, it gets harder and harder every day,” he said.
Cerrillo was one of several residents speaking out against a proposed expansion to Highway 99 that would reconstruct and expand a pair of interchanges at North and American avenues.
The $140 million expansion was announced in February and quickly drew criticism from south Fresno residents, who fear it will lead to the build-out of more industrial zoned land, including a 3,000-acre industrial park near the community of Malaga.
Malaga is a small community six miles southeast of downtown Fresno.
This project is not happening in isolation, but against a backdrop of discriminatory land use transportation practices that spans back to when Highway 99 was first built in the 1950s, said Jacqueline Maldonado with the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School. The highway construction destroyed more than 20 blocks of housing at the time and divided communities of color and set forth a path that has disproportionately concentrated industrial development and pollution in places like Malaga and Calwa, she said.
The area has become a center point for environmental justice concerns and is being watched by state leaders like California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
As if proving the point, the speakers on Thursday were interrupted at several points by the sounds of loud passing trucks.
Lawsuit targets Highway 99 project
The press conference rally comes a month after Friends of Calwa and Fresno Building Healthy Communities filed suit against Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration to halt the project.
The lawsuit claims that Caltrans’ review of the project “fell significantly short” and that an Environmental Impact Report “failed to acknowledge the existence of any impacted communities or sensitive receptors.”
The project also failed to consider conflicts with air quality and land use plans and policies or the cumulative impacts of the project with other projects up and down the 99 corridor. That includes the impact of extra vehicle capacity in the area.
The suit claims the project is in conflict with state policies promoting environmental justice, such as SB 1000, which mandate policies to improve air quality and reduce pollution exposures and “promote public engagement in the public decision making process.”
“For years, south Fresno has put up with endless industrialization in our communities, damaging our health, safety and overall well-being,” Friends of Calwa executive director Laura Moreno said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
“We’ve demanded action from the Air Resources Board, Valley Air District, local elected officials, and even the governor and Attorney General, but still this project moves forward.”
The group is asking that the project be halted until it can comply with state and national environmental policy regulations. It is also is asking to be awarded legal fees and other costs and expenses.
Caltrans and the FHWA are expected to respond to the suit by mid-May and an initial court date could be scheduled by June.
This story was originally published April 5, 2023 at 1:18 PM.