California agency weighs warehouse rule for air quality
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Southern California air quality regulators are considering a rule that would curb diesel emissions from thousands of trucks that ferry goods from the growing number of massive warehouses in the region run by Amazon and other companies. Areas around the facilities have weathered increased pollution affecting their largely minority communities.
The so-called warehouse rule that will be voted on Friday by the South Coast Air Quality Management District would institute a points-based system requiring some 3,000 distribution centers to choose from a menu of options to reduce or offset emissions. It could include choices like replacing diesel trucks and other equipment with electric models, putting in rooftop solar panels or installing air filters at nearby schools or day cares.
"Alternatively, warehouse operators could prepare and implement a custom plan specific to their site, or they could pay a mitigation fee," according to the proposal before the board. The fees would go toward funding similar air quality improvements in surrounding neighborhoods.
Environmental and community groups have for years pushed tighter regulations to help neighborhoods inundated with smog-forming nitrogen oxides from trucks driving to and from sprawling warehouse complexes owned by Amazon and other distributors across the inland region east of Los Angeles.
“These communities are often disadvantaged and people of color. So it’s part of our ongoing commitment to address the environmental justice inequity, as well as addressing the overall regional air quality pollution,” Wayne Nastri, the South Coast district's executive officer, said Thursday.
More than 2.4 million people live within half a mile of at least one large warehouse and those areas have higher rates of asthma and heart attacks, and are disproportionately Black...