[190613.EN.BIZ] Suing LA Eco-lobbies Call Building BNSF Rail Yard 'Environmental Racism'

CHARGING "environmental racism", the Natural Resources Defence Council has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court opposing the BNSF Railway's Southern California International Gateway rail yard project.

The NRDC said the project violates the California Environmental Quality Act and the state and federal Civil Rights Acts, and it will cause cancer, asthma and add to air pollution, reports American Shipper.

Calling the rail yard "environmental racism" because it is next to a black neighbourhood, NRDC lawyer David Pettit said: "The City of Los Angeles wants to put it in a low-income minority neighborhood because they think they can get away with it."

The 6.2-square kilometre rail yard is just outside West Long Beach, alongside the Terminal Island Freeway on land owned by the Port of Los Angeles. The railway contends the US$500 million facility will result in cleaner air by reducing traffic on the 710 freeway.

BNSF argues that being within four miles of the San Pedro Bay port area, the new rail yard will eliminate 24 miles of trucking to the nearest intermodal terminal, thus cutting pollution. In May, the Long Beach City Council voted to sue Los Angeles.

Said litigant Angelo Logan, executive director of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice: "This project is not only dangerous to the health of the working class, poor communities of colour, but to the entire region."

Source : HKSG, 17.06.13.