SOUTH TACOMA — Before the sun rises on many days, Alejandro Fernandez hears the coarse horns of freight trains rumbling through the city. Then, military aircraft roar overhead.
Fernandez is among the hundreds of residents and concerned neighbors who voiced their opposition to what is slated to be the one of the largest warehouse complexes in the world, to be built in their community.
Bridge Industrial’s proposal to erect four buildings totaling about 2.5 million square feet on a Superfund cleanup site in South Tacoma is anticipated to bring about 5,000 additional vehicle trips, including about 1,400 truck trips, through this part of the city each weekday when the development is fully occupied, according to planning documents filed with the city of Tacoma.
“And now we’re gonna have semis?” said Fernandez, who’s lived in industrialized South Tacoma for about a decade with his family. “South Tacoma has the lowest life expectancy rate in the city. … It’s systematic.”
Despite pushback from residents and environmental advocates, including an attempt to appeal a permit decision for the project, Bridge Industrial could break ground as soon as spring.
Bridge Industrial did not respond to interview requests.
The warehouse project was the catalyst for Rep. Sharlett Mena, a first-term lawmaker, to propose legislation that would overhaul the state’s environmental permitting processes and protect communities overburdened by pollution, like those she represents.
Dubbed the CURB Act, House Bill 2070 would add a review of cumulative pollution in neighborhoods carrying the greatest environmental health disparities when evaluating project applications.
Applications for projects with some of the biggest impacts on communities — like adding diesel truck trips or refining or processing fossil fuels — could be denied permits, or be required to mitigate for the worst impacts. While the legislation won’t be moving forward in the current legislative session, Mena plans to revive the effort next year.
“We literally can’t take it anymore, right?” Mena said, addressing Fernandez and his neighbor, Thiery Prim, sitting with The Seattle Times on a recent visit.
Historical wrongs
Mena grew up in the shadow of what is today one of the most toxic sites in America.
Born to Mexican immigrants who worked on farms and in a meat-processing plant in Pasco, Mena had classmates whose families worked at Hanford. Then, she didn’t know much about Hanford, one of the three sites that made up the U.S. government’s Manhattan Project, that’s now home to more than 50 million gallons of radioactive waste.
“The more I got to know, the more I became incredibly alarmed that there is the biggest nuclear waste cleanup in the Western Hemisphere right in our backyard,” Mena said. “There are huge implications for how this is done, and I didn’t see my community at the table.”
Black and brown workers who helped build Hanford lived in segregated barracks on the Hanford Reservation or were confined to East Pasco; Kennewick was a sundown town, and Richland remained all-white by providing housing only for scientists, professional staff and their families.
Today, the Tri-Cities largely reflect those racist policies. Pasco remains the most racially diverse, and parts of the city carry the highest ranking on the state’s environmental health disparities map.
As a staff member for the state Department of Ecology, Mena began asking questions. Are updates on the cleanup translated into the languages spoken by community members? Do people beyond Richland know where to find information?
And Mena saw the need for consideration of not only a business or project’s service today, but how developers and state oversight agencies think about the impacts for future generations. Mena doesn’t want the communities who have always paid the highest price to be sacrificed again.
It’s a story that plays out in communities of color across the state.
Environmental justice
Mena, fueled by her experiences in her hometown and her current community, knew she wanted to take on legislation that would ensure neighborhoods that have borne the brunt of big polluting industries would have a say. Front and Centered, a nonprofit advocacy group representing communities of color, Indigenous peoples and people with lower incomes on the front lines of climate change, approached Mena with a similar ask.
She and the coalition drafted the bill that would require the agencies that oversee project review under the State Environmental Policy Act to conduct an environmental justice impact statement in communities that rank a seven or higher on the state’s Environmental Health Disparities map.
Environmental justice impact statements have never before been part of the process.
The map considers exposure to pollution like diesel emissions, ozone concentration, and fine particle pollution, as well as proximity to toxic waste sites, and ranks the communities on a scale up to 10, representing the highest health disparities. All but one tract within Mena’s district rank a seven or higher. The only one lower is a six.
The bill would require agencies overseeing the permitting and environmental review process to conduct a public notification and comment process, and to deny or mitigate proposed actions that would contribute to adverse environmental or public health stressors in a pollution burdened community.
It also revokes the ability to claim economics as a public benefit.
“My intention is to put my thumb on the scale for health and say: We have to prioritize this because folks are paying a cost, a sometimes scary, and sometimes deadly cost,” Mena said.
Had the CURB Act been enacted before Bridge Industrial filing its initial land use permits, the project could have been denied because of the disproportionate impacts on South Tacoma neighborhoods, said Molly Tack-Hooper, supervising senior attorney for Earthjustice.
“Where do our human rights come into play?”
Thiery Prim was born to Cambodian refugees in Tacoma, and was raised in Hilltop. Today, she’s raising her kids in South Tacoma, with a tight-knit group of neighbors.
South Tacoma is up-and-coming, she says, with old buildings along South Tacoma Way re-imagined as beloved Cuban restaurants, bagel and flower shops. The warehouse project, Prim said, seems like a blow to the work the community is putting in to heal the impacts of generations of racist zoning and industrial pollution.
“I realized that this is where I want to raise my family,” Prim said. “It’s a good neighborhood. It’s working class and it provides you the ability to grow the next generation. And so when we decided to buy our house here, we decided that this was going to be where we wanted to begin our legacy.”
After a short drive to the dead-end drive toward the roughly 43-football-field-long expanse set to host the warehouse project, Prim recalled the last time she was here, visiting a brother who worked in a nearby factory, until a hereditary health condition forced his early retirement.
“It’s so frustrating because we can only voice what we can,” Prim said. “We have a right to live in a community where we don’t have to worry about pollution. We shouldn’t have to worry about getting cancer, about my children developing asthma. Where do our human rights come into play?”
Prim and Fernandez’s neighborhood is ranked 10 (out of 10) for experiencing the worst environmental health disparities on the state’s map.
The warehouse site is about 150 acres of undeveloped wetlands, trees and green space atop the South Tacoma Aquifer, a major source of drinking water for the city. The loss of unpaved space in the city could add to the urban heat island effect, absorbing rather than reflecting heat and contributing to higher temperatures than areas with more vegetation.
“Why can’t we make an effort to create some green jobs to depave some of those sidewalks and plant trees?” Fernandez said, speaking about the south end of Tacoma. “Having more trees in the community is going to bring a healthy lifestyle to the people, you can have sombra, which is shade. It’s so hot here.”
In Tacoma, urban heat islands increase maximum temperatures by as much as 6.2 degrees above the local baseline, according to the city of Tacoma. Neighborhoods in Central and South Tacoma can get as much as 14 degrees hotter than neighborhoods in North Tacoma.
Humans’ core body temperatures operate within a fairly narrow range to protect people and their organs, said Kristie Ebi, a professor in the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment. She said there are physiological and behavioral mechanisms that can keep core body temperatures from increasing during heat waves, such as going to a body of water or a park with cooler temperatures.
“There’s less opportunity for people who live, for example, in redlined districts, where they just don’t have the trees and don’t have the access to the green spaces, to help bring down their core body temperature,” Ebi said.
Temperatures above 82 degrees significantly increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, respiratory illnesses, and heat stroke, according to the city. It can be especially harmful to seniors, kids, pregnant people, people with breathing or heart issues, low-income and people of color, outdoor workers, and people living outside.
South Tacoma, one of the most racially diverse parts of Pierce County with a poverty rate about 7% higher than statewide, is a community of focus for the county health department. South Tacoma residents tend to live six years less than Pierce County residents, 74 years compared with 80 years, according to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
A recent report by the state identified South and East Tacoma as overburdened communities highly impacted by air pollution.
The county health department, state Department of Health, Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, the EPA and the state Department of Ecology all shared concerns in letters about the warehouse project’s impacts on the community, which is already pollution overburdened.
In an appeal filed by Earthjustice on behalf of 350 Tacoma and the South Tacoma Neighborhood Council, the groups allege the warehouse will not only increase traffic and diesel pollution, but negatively impact residents’ health and progress on the state’s emission-reduction goals.
An analysis prepared for Bridge Industrial forecasts the project will emit nearly 24,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, equivalent to burning 318 tanker trucks worth of gasoline, or nearly 27 million pounds of coal.
More than 550 people provided public testimony or submitted letters on the project.
The community’s concerns are valid, said Tacoma City Councilmember Joe Bushnell, but unfortunately the project landed in South Tacoma because it’s zoned industrial.
“I’m all for giving local folks the opportunity to say what happens in their community,” Bushnell said of Mena’s legislation. “I’m invested and I know the community is invested in making South Tacoma the best place it can be for families and businesses.”
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