Action: Ask for a full Environmental review for a huge parking/storage area. – Deadline is this Thursday (1/31)!
Please email city planner Jay Dobrowalski at jay.dobrowalski@oxnard.org and ask the Oxnard Planning Commission to require a full environmental review for the port expansion, project PZ 18-500-02.
Background
Dear CAUSE friends,
We’ve worked in Oxnard for over a decade to turn around a long legacy of the community being targeted for the region’s most polluting projects, from the Puente power plant to the BHP Billiton liquefied natural gas terminal to the Halaco Superfund toxic waste site. Particularly in South Oxnard, the community has a vision to clean up the heavy industry hurting the health of nearby residents and restore the coastline for local families to enjoy.
There’s a new project on our radar that’s raising concerns for CAUSE and other community partners about impacts to air quality in South Oxnard, more industrialization of the coast, and temporary and low paying jobs without benefits.
Ports across the coast are expanding rapidly with global trade, creating growing pollution impacts to nearby communities. Already, neighborhoods along Hueneme Rd. stretching into Oxnard from the Port of Hueneme are in the 87th percentile of diesel emissions in California.
What’s being proposed now?
The Oxnard Planning Commission will be deciding on using 35 acres of land to store up to 5,000 imported cars next to Southwinds, one of the most densely populated and low-income residential neighborhoods in Oxnard, home to many indigenous Mixteco families and local farmworkers. This land had for years been envisioned as a Gateway Park to the ongoing restoration of Ormond Beach. This site is now planned as a 5 year bridge to an even larger future 250 acre port expansion on farmland that would be annexed into the city in a few years.
Many South Oxnard community members have serious concerns about this plan. But right now the project is being moved forward without doing an Environmental Impact Report (EIR).
After generations of South Oxnard neighborhoods being treated as a dumping ground for pollution, we think the community deserves transparency and accountability on any new industrial development. Please urge the Oxnard Planning Commission to require an environmental review of this project so community members can at least know about potential impacts to their health and well-being.
Sample comment:
“Dear Oxnard Planning Commission,
I urge the Oxnard Planning Commission to require an Environmental Impact Report for the planned expansion of the Port of Hueneme in South Oxnard. Community members deserve to know this project’s potential impacts to their health and environment, and a project of this scale should not be approved without real environmental review. South Oxnard has long been burdened with polluting projects. This project would be located in a census tract already considered more pollution burdened than 98% of other areas in California according to the CA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The project is located directly next to the Southwinds residential neighborhood, one of the poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods in the city. This storage lot would have capacity for nearly 5,000 imported cars that would impact local air quality through cold-starts as they are shuttled back and forth from the port before being trucked out of the city. Please provide more transparency and accountability to local community members by requiring an environmental review of this major industrial project in South Oxnard. Thank you.”
INDIVISIBLE VENTURA 