Fresno trucking firm displaced by CA high-speed rail plans move to pollution hot spot
A Fresno trucking company displaced by California high-speed rail construction wants to relocate, but residents near the proposed site say they don’t want more heavy trucks passing through a neighborhood already choked with industrial pollution.
The Central Transport trucking company looks to build a roughly 87,000-square-foot regional trucking facility less than a half-mile from Orange Center Elementary School and estimates it will bring 70 to 80 jobs with it.
The relocation is projected to add 120 diesel truck and 180 passenger vehicle trips per day to the area, according to planning documents. All those big rigs come with concerns over safety and air quality in a part of town notorious for toxic air.
“Our children are as valuable and as important as children further north, you know, where the schools are just full of everything they possibly can get,” resident Patricia Garcia said. “I’m really hoping that they move further away from here. There’s a lot of empty land further away.”
The 58-year-old said she has lived on Cherry Avenue since 2003 in a home between the proposed facility and the elementary school. Nine of her family members live in homes on the street, she said.
Central Transport operates from a facility at Church and Cherry avenues just south of downtown and had previously been located further outside the city along Highway 99 until the California High-Speed Rail Authority bought the land.
Michigan-based Crown Enterprises Inc. applied for a permit to build a new facility on Cherry Avenue, which could be annexed into the city along with some other land for a total of 80 acres. Central Transport would be the tenant, and the city would have to change the agricultural zoning to heavy industrial.
Crown Enterprises did not respond to requests for comment from The Bee.
Fresno has some of the worst air quality in the country, which experts often attribute to the bowl-like shape of the San Joaquin Valley that allows pollution to blow in easier than it can blow out. Emissions from vehicles are more likely to stay trapped in the Valley than in other parts of the state.
The American Lung Association gave Fresno a failing grade for the dirty air in its latest report. The California Environmental Protection Agency also has reported that communities in the southern part of Fresno and west of Highway 99 have greater particulate matter in the air than 95% or more of census tracts in the state.
Orange Center School District Superintendent Terry Hirschfield has firmly opposed adding the facility down the street from the elementary school, which has about 260 students, according to state data.
“Our community is already overburdened. We are in one of the most polluted areas in California and almost in the nation,” she told the City Council in August. “Cherry Avenue already suffers from dangerous truck traffic at our school ... adding more trucks will make this worse.”
The project was not recommended for approval by the District 3 Review Committee in 2023, but was recommended in a June split vote by the city’s Planning Commission.
The facility was to go before the City Council in August but was tabled and set for next Thursday’s meeting.
Garcia said she’s heard supporters of the project tout the jobs it’s supposed to bring to the area, but she said she doubts any of those jobs will go to the people living in the area.
“People around here are mainly agricultural workers, and a lot of them are migrant workers,” she said. “A lot of them are very poor people. They can’t just pick up and move away.”
This story was originally published September 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
