South-central Fresno residents seek a pause on industrial development near their homes

As south-central Fresno residents, who live just south of city limits, we could once walk our kids to school on quiet roads and see the stars twinkling in the night sky above our homes.

We, and hundreds of other residents, have built our lives, raised our families and made our home here for generations.

Over the past few years, the city of Fresno has permitted an explosion of industrial development in our neighborhoods, seriously undermining our quality of life and health. Massive warehouse distribution facilities have sprung up by our homes, neighborhood elementary schools and places of worship. The city’s General Plan envisions the clustering of polluting facilities in the area, and even the elimination of some south Fresno neighborhoods. It designates land up to our doorsteps and including entire neighborhoods, like Daleville and East Central Avenue, among others, for conversion to industrial uses.

Thousands of diesel trucks going to and from recently approved warehouses now travel each day on the same roads where we live and walk, and truck docks face the elementary school playground. The California Air Resources Board has found that exposure to diesel emissions can contribute to cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness and premature death, and put children and the elderly at the most significant risk. Warehouse and industrial facilities and the truck traffic they bring also impact us inside our homes, exposing us to dust, sound, vibration, and light 24 hours a day, blotting out the night sky’s stars we used to watch and keeping us up at night.

The city’s placement of numerous warehouses in south Fresno continues a longstanding pattern: the city and county have dumped unwanted land uses, like landfills, biomass, and glass recycling facilities in our neighborhoods for decades. As a result, the census tract where we live ranks among the most pollution-burdened in the state, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency. The extraordinarily high levels of hazardous air pollution in our community led the state to select south central Fresno to develop a Community Emissions Reduction Plan.

Residents have advocated for solutions grounded in our right to a healthy environment and the chance to enjoy our homes. As a result of our advocacy, in 2019, the City Council committed to developing a South Central Specific Plan with community input.

Dozens of us have participated in the South Central Specific Plan’s development and objected to the continued siting of unhealthy land uses in our neighborhoods. We have called on the city to adopt buffer zones to ensure there is distance between new industrial land uses and homes, schools, and other sensitive uses; to re-route truck traffic away from homes; to adopt robust measures to reduce facilities’ environmental impacts; and to ensure neighborhoods benefit from business through local hire and community investment policies.

We called on the City to plan for and actively support the development of grocery stores, health facilities, recreation centers, and other uses that both residents and workers need. We asked to be treated fairly and receive the same protections that all communities deserve.

Despite many hours spent contributing to SCSP’s development, the city has still not completed the plan or even meaningfully incorporated our input or that of our neighbors. The cty’s proposed land use map would encircle our neighborhoods with new industrial land uses, which the city continues to actively support and facilitate industrial expansion in our community. This past spring, the city approved an expansion of an Amazon warehouse. Though the city and developer agreed to take significant steps to mitigate its impacts, the fact remains that the facility will bring more than a million additional vehicles to our neighborhoods each year.

Currently, the city is processing applications for a freight terminal near Orange Center Elementary School and a truck parking lot on Central Avenue by homes, among other projects.

Each new facility the city approves in our neighborhood before it completes the specific plan deepens unjust land use patterns, leaves residents’ vulnerable to unmitigated pollution, and reduces the ability of the SCSP to address them meaningfully.

So, we call on the city to pause on all siting and expansion of industrial development in South Central Fresno until it adopts a specific plan that reflects community priorities. Like Riverside, Jurupa Valley and Colton, other cities have adopted ordinances pausing industrial development while they developed policies to safeguard communities from negative impacts. To preserve our health, homes, and futures, Fresno must do the same.