Tiny bureau takes on polluters

Xavier Becerra

The Bureau of Environmental Justice:

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced today that his agency is suing the Federal Aviation Administration, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, and the developer of an air cargo facility for unlawfully approving a controversial airport expansion without adequate environmental analysis. 

The nearly 700,000 square-foot warehouse, which is already under construction, is projected to generate at least 500 truck trips and 26 flights daily — and it’s right next door to a community that California’s Air Resources Board has already classified as disproportionately burdened by pollution.

“In California we can’t have business-as-usual hurt distressed communities in our state,” said Becerra at a press conference at Indian Springs High School in San Bernardino on Friday morning. “We have a responsibility to provide justice, including environmental justice, to all of California’s communities.”

The lawsuit comes on the eve of the second anniversary of the creation of California’s Bureau of Environmental Justice. Two years ago, Becerra housed the bureau within the state Department of Justice’s environment section and gave it a singular focus: enforcing environmental laws to protect communities disproportionately burdened by pollution and contamination. 

Today’s suit is just the latest in a string of actions the bureau has taken to achieve this goal across the state in recent years — and one of relatively few that has taken the form of a formal legal intervention...

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