Thursday, October 10, 2024

Bill separating new California warehouses from neighborhoods signed into law

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Rules intended to shield California communities from harm associated with new large warehouses will be required by state law under a bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The governor’s office on Sunday, Sept. 29, announced Newsom signed AB 98, which faced opposition from business groups, local governments and environmental justice advocates for different reasons.

“The signing of AB 98 represents an important step forward for communities impacted by the over proliferation of warehousing,” the bill’s co-sponsor, Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes, D-Colton, said in a news release.

“This legislation strikes a delicate balance that puts in place a higher standard for logistic development near sensitive receptors,” she added. “I want to be clear, nothing prevents a local government from putting in place stronger protections to further protect vulnerable populations.”

The product of a late-hour push ahead of a legislative deadline, AB 98 forbids cities and counties from approving new warehouses or warehouse expansions unless a series of standards are met.

Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes, D-Colton, co-sponsored AB 98, a bill regulating how close new California warehouses can be to neighborhoods. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, announced that Newsom signed the bill. (File photo by John Valenzuela, Contributing Photographer)

Depending where they are, warehouses must have setbacks of 300 or 500 feet from homes, schools, daycares and other so-called sensitive receptors, or land uses seen as vulnerable to harm from adjacent warehouses.

The bill co-sponsored by Assemblymember Juan Carrillo, D-Palmdale, also will impose landscaping and screening requirements, such as a wall or landscape berm, to shield warehouses from their neighbors, with landscaping buffers ranging from 50 to 100 feet.

Depending on their size, new warehouses will have to use zero-emission technology, meet energy efficiency standards and ban trucks from idling their engines.

Warehouses also will have to be built on arterial roads, collector roads, major thoroughfares or local roads primarily used by commercial traffic. And if homes are demolished to make way for a warehouse, AB 98 requires two replacement units of affordable housing for every razed home and money equal to 12 months’ rent paid to every displaced tenant.

The Inland Empire’s logistics boom has brought warehouses, ranging from several hundred thousand to 1 million square feet in size, closer to communities.

With that, critics say, comes more air pollution from truck diesel exhaust, light and noise pollution and heavy truck traffic disrupting neighborhoods. State officials have said warehouses disproportionately end up next to communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

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