POLA Circulates New SCIG Railyard Proposal

“A long, long time ago, someone had a very bad idea of putting a really huge railyard next to community members in West Long Beach.” That’s how Joe Lyou, president and CEO of the Coalition for Clean Air, describes the beginning of the proposal to build the Southern California International Gateway, known as SCIG.  

“And the community rose up, and environmental justice organizations rose up, and the environmental organizations rose up,” he said. “And then, some of the regulatory agencies got involved, and the Long Beach Unified School District got involved, and others got involved in fighting this proposal for this huge railyard next to this low-income community of color.” 

It was the first such lawsuit ever joined by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, on whose board Lyou served at the time.

“And, using California environmental laws, they defeated the proposal based off the mischaracterization of the environmental impacts, or the ill-consideration of the environmental impacts, and the Port of Los Angeles was back to square one,” Lyou said.

The time involved has been staggering. 

“The Project has undergone extensive review and evaluation under the California Environmental Quality Act (‘CEQA’) since 2005,” the Port of Los Angeles stated in its newly released, which was released for comment on May 19, for a public comment period ending July 9.

“Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report” 

The review is narrowly limited in scope — to impacts of off-site ambient air pollution — but studies those impacts at six benchmark years, purportedly spanning 50 years.

But there’s a catch. The first two benchmark years — 2016 and 2020 — have already passed, while a third, 2023, will surely pass before the project is built. That leaves 2030, 2035, and 2046/2066, which, of course, is not “a year” at all. So, it’s only meaningfully looking at a small time-slice of the whole 50-year project lifespan, looking at five pollution standards for nitrogen oxide and particulate matter: one hour nitrogen dioxide (federal and state), annual nitrogen dioxide, 24-hour particulate matter 10, annual particulate matter 10, and 24-hour particulate matter 2.5. Of these, the project exceeds the standard of significance for the first four in all three relevant “benchmark years” except for 2030 for annual nitrogen dioxide.

“South Coast AQMD remains concerned about potential air quality impacts from the SCIG Project to nearby environmental justice communities that are already highly impacted by air pollution from the ports and other activities,” AQMD spokesman Bradley Whitaker told Random Lengths News. “We are currently thoroughly reviewing the air quality analysis in the revised [environmental impact report] and cannot provide comment until our review is complete.”

The National Resources Defense Council was also unable to comment in time for publication, as was UCLA environmental law professor Sean Hecht, another attorney involved in earlier litigation.

“The Coalition For A Safe Environment has done a preliminary review of the draft EIR and once again it fails to address significant concerns of our harbor communities,” founder and president Jesse Marquez said. “The Port of LA has taken the position of interpreting the court order to provide the minimum of additional information. The court found them guilty of not identifying and mitigating all the air quality impacts and the cumulative impacts of the project.  They are stating that past analyses were not addressed in the court wWrit and have not been revised. This is a wrong interpretation…. The port claims, ‘There is currently no accepted methodology available that can accurately quantify local health effects from ambient nitrogen dioxide concentrations associated with an individual project.’ This is untrue. The port could have funded a health impact assessment and a public health survey to established a public health baseline of communities near the proposed BNSF SCIG Facility, all communities bordering truck transportation routes going to the BNSF SCIG Facility and all communities bordering Chassis and container storage yards.”

Not only has SCIG’s planning process dragged on so long, it’s done so with little change, compared to the world around it, Lyou noted — especially after the pandemic and racial justice awakening of the past year. 

“It was, more or less, kind of standard fare when it comes to bad proposals and legal challenges,” Lyou said. “But at this point, it seems a bit bizarre that we’re still having this fight and still going through these motions when so much has changed in the world and there should be an opportunity to have a rational conversation about how we move containers and goods in and out of our ports to minimize the harm in the host communities. And, this environmental document isn’t doing that. So, it makes it feel a bit surreal to be going through this odd dance yet again.”

Equally puzzling is that the port has changed in some respects.

“The Port of Los Angeles has some major on-dock rail systems and projects that they’re moving forward with,” Lyou pointed out. “This was exactly what the community asked them to do, and they are doing now to some extent. So, it’s kind of strange to think of this project in the context of what the port is already committed to do on dock and so I’m not sure how that all fits in.”

There is a public comment meeting on Zoom on June 15. See Community Alerts for details.

Public Meeting Alert 

The Port of Los Angeles will host a virtual public meeting via Zoom at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15 to provide opportunity for public comment on a Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) Project. Participants should limit their comments to addressing the information provided in the Revised Draft EIR.

 Click here for Zoom link to meeting.

 To listen to the meeting in Spanish, call 877-853-5257 or 888-475-4499, both toll free numbers. Enter webinar ID: 951 1292 1684

 After a brief overview of the proposed project, Port officials will take comments from the public. Speakers will be limited to three minutes.

 Written comments and questions may also be sent via email to ceqacomments@portla.org. Comments sent via email should include “SCIG Project” in the subject line and a valid mailing address in the email. Questions may also be directed to Lisa Ochsner with the Port of Los Angeles Environmental Management Division at (310) 732-3412.