What we learned from the megawarehouse legal fight
By Gemini Gnull
Climate Alliance of the South Sound
We live in the midst of climate catastrophe as greedy corporations and their beneficiaries force us past the carrying capacity of our world, causing mass extinctions and disasters. Fast-moving tragedies such as wildfires, typhoons, and floods, and slow-moving devastation such as shrinking water supply, increasingly polluted air and water, decreasing crop productivity, and more. In such times, “business as usual” is a death sentence.
While the ultra-wealthy run corporations, governments, and militaries that destroy the earth, it is poor in the global south, as well as the working class across the world, that pays the price with our health and with our lives.
Yet, in the face of this humanitarian crisis, Mayor Woodards and Tacoma City Council continue to bet on the side of the corporations – twiddling their thumbs and making toothless resolutions like the “climate emergency” and “anti-racist systems transformation” and unimplemented plans like the city Climate Action Plan and One Tacoma Comprehensive Plan. They never bolster them up with clear laws, ordinances, fines, and fees. And they won’t as long as it is profitable not to do so. Business as usual reigns, and that means the city is pro-business, anti-human.
This is how we end up in 2023 dealing with this anti-human monstrosity planned for South Tacoma – the Bridge Industrial megawarehouse. This project would pave 5.4 million square feet of green space with impermeable surface, including four ginormous warehouses generating upwards of 10,000 new vehicle trips a day- spewing diesel, a cacophony of deadly sound, dangerously clogging our residential streets, increasing accidents, endangering our young and old alike. Our South Tacoma aquifer, the city’s backup water used every year, will lose all that recharge area. The toxic chemicals on site, legacy of the Superfund site, may be disturbed and end up in our water, air, playgrounds, and roadways.
Our elected officials never made any laws to protect us from this. They never bothered to put up guard rails preventing destructive development or apparently even envisioned any implementation of their pretty resolutions and plans. The mega warehouse complex would be right in the middle of the neighborhood with the worst health equity, the poorest environmental justice, and the shortest life expectancy. It was the only Heavy Industry zoned land next to residential zoned land in the entire city, and our elected officials just let it stay that way.
Worse yet, the City had ample knowledge of all this and ignored it. Many hundreds of individuals, several dozen organizations, and many City, State and Federal agencies wrote in their concerns and inundated the city with letters and analysis that fully showed the pitfalls of going forward without an Environmental Impact Statement.
The City ignored them. Ignored us.
It’s hard not to see the City elected officials as our adversaries when they open the door to each and every business but slam it on the faces of residents who have mobilized and articulated our very basic human needs – a livable Tacoma.
When the city fails us, we can and do take things into our own hands. Remember – it is not the elected officials who pour the concrete, build the buildings, or grow our food. It’s us, the people, who make this city. We have given the elected officials the power to lead us and they have failed us. But we will not fail each other. Due to community support and outreach, EarthJustice took on the cause and on behalf of 350Tacoma and the South Tacoma Neighborhood Council appealed the city’s decision to allow this development with no Environmental Impact Statement.
The Hearing Examiner ruled that this construction could be permitted with no Environmental Impact Statement. This shows how bad our laws are. Stop this catastrophic trend now!
We will no longer be ignored. Join a local organization committed to fighting the warehouse – like Climate Alliance of the South Sound, 350Tacoma, and/or your neighborhood council. No one person built this city, and no one person can stop this warehouse. It is only through the power of collective action that we will protect our city, improve our neighborhoods, and secure a better future for everyone! We can fight, and we can win!
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