‘Sloppy’ Caltrans review for Fresno freeway project demands AG Rob Bonta’s scrutiny | Opinion

Fresno County wants to build a massive industrial park off Highway 99 that will negatively impact the health of south Fresno residents that already breathe some of the nation’s most polluted air.

This glaring inequity has drawn the scrutiny of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, first in his March 2022 correspondence to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and during local appearances since.

“If choices are made that are unlawful, it’s our job to enforce the law and yes, we will get involved,” Bonta said during an August news conference in Fresno.

“The thing that angers me the most is when people who have power use that power to hurt folks who have less power.”

I completely agree. But what happens when the abuse of power comes from inside Bonta’s own house, or at least a parallel wing?

Opinion

Fresno County’s efforts are being aided by Caltrans, which proposes to make $140 million worth of interchange improvements at North and American avenues that would give the 2,940-acre industrial park better freeway access.

However, in Caltrans’ environmental review of the project, a document that is supposed to study the air pollution and traffic impacts to the Malaga, Calwa and south Fresno communities — census tracts that already rank in the top 1% nationally of overburdened areas — there’s no mention of the Fresno County Business and Industrial Campus.

None whatsoever. The harmful effects of millions of semi-truck trips upon tens of thousands of residents’ health is disregarded. Even though, since fairly early in the process, Caltrans officials had full knowledge of the county’s proposal.

We know all this thanks to the detailed reporting of Fresnoland’s Greg Weaver, who reviewed hundreds of internal emails and documents and interviewed a dozen subject experts during his investigation.

One of them was Jeanie Ward-Waller, a Caltrans executive currently on leave, who claimed the agency’s omission of the industrial park was “deliberate” and meant to “get around avoiding having to talk about more vehicle miles traveled, more emissions, and more impacts on environmental justice communities.”

Caltrans officials ducked Weaver’s questions. In its own environmental review of the freeway project, agency officials repelled arguments against including the industrial park by stating people didn’t literally live on the property and therefore “the project would not have a disproportionate adverse environmental impact.”

Besides being dismissive, this conclusion flies in the face of established science. Nitrogen oxides, a hazardous gas compound emitted by engine exhaust and linked to numerous health ailments, disperses over a wide area.

“Caltrans’ reasoning ignores everything we know about air pollution,” said Ed Avol, a USC professor who co-authored a groundbreaking study on the respiratory health of children who live near busy roads. “They have not done their due diligence. Unfortunately, they often do quick and sloppy work.”

Added Mike Kleeman, a UC Davis professor and author of several San Joaquin Valley air quality studies: “I don’t believe that there’s ever a situation where one can say that if no one lives on the land where I am going to build the highway, there are no public health impacts.”

Rather than admit its mistake — or even haste — Caltrans stubbornly refuses to redo its environmental analysis to account for the proposed industrial park. Rather, it has relied on legal maneuvers seemingly intended to price out dissenting voices.

Caltrans’ questionable tactic

Earlier this year, the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a Fresno-based group, filed a federal lawsuit against Caltrans to challenge the interchange project. Two months later, the agency moved to cross-file the federal suit into state court to create a second court case on the same topic.

Why would Caltrans do that? David Pettit, a senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, told Fresnoland such tactics are designed to avoid the case’s merits by making litigation “as expensive as possible, hoping that the community groups can’t pay and then the case will go away.”

If true, Caltrans should be ashamed. The agency has an ethical obligation to residents of south Fresno to ensure its environmental analysis is as complete and accurate as possible — not to bleed dry those that speak against its obvious flaws.

Since Caltrans won’t do the right thing on its own, the agency should be compelled to do so in court. And I can think of fewer attorneys better suited for such an assignment than the one in Sacramento whose office’s legal fees are funded by state taxpayers.

After all, Bonta has shown an eagerness to challenge Fresno County over apparent “race discrimination in housing laws.”

“Locating new industrial sites’ in Malaga and Calwa would knowingly add to the recognized environmental and health problems faced by residents,” Bonta wrote in his 2022 letter to county supervisors.

But what happens when those skids are greased by a fellow state agency? At a time when Bonta should be raising his voice against Caltrans, California’s top cop has been silent.