As the new year begins, the fate of a proposed cement warehouse that would significantly increase diesel truck traffic through Barrio Logan is uncertain.
What is certain is that a coalition of neighborhood residents, people of faith and health activists will have their voices heard by the corporation that wants to build the facility and the public agency that has to approve it, the San Diego Port Commission.
“No decisions about us without us!” declared Jesuit Father Scott Santarosa, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish.
He was the last speaker at a prayer vigil the parish organized on the night of Dec. 12, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, outside the port’s headquarters on Pacific Highway. About 75 people attended the candlelit event, held on a damp night with temperatures in the high 40s, including parishioners and Jesuit Fathers Brad Mills and Neal José Wilkinson, and members of the diocese’s Creation Care Team Network.
“Our Lady of Guadalupe is not just a beautiful woman whose picture we hang on our wall,” Father Santarosa said. “She sends us forth, like she did with Juan Diego, to put our faith in action. That is why we’re here tonight. We’re not finished.”
A group of parishioners attended the Port Commission’s meeting the following day, when a public hearing on the warehouse had been scheduled. The company that wants to build it, however, asked for the hearing to be postponed to “take additional time to engage with the community more directly and in a more substantive way.”
The company, Mitsubishi Corp., is proposing to build the warehouse at the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal. The warehouse would create about 24,000 new diesel truck trips per year rumbling through Barrio Logan.
Neighborhood residents already suffer some of the highest rates of asthma and cancer in the state, according to health authorities.
Father Santarosa acknowledged that the new warehouse would bring permanent jobs, a welcome development in the city. His parish, however, is urging the Port Commissioners to vote “no” on the warehouse until the company is required to use zero-emission trucks.
At the prayer vigil, the pastor said that between 1,400 and 1,800 people attend Mass on Sunday at his parish, which includes people who live in the neighborhood and those who come to the area to go to church.
“Everyone who passes our doors is breathing our air,” which is already contaminated, he said. “And that is not acceptable. We want cleaner air….”
Full story at the Southern Cross.
While I understand the concerns. CBS8 made some interesting points:
… during the Dec.13 meeting, Mitsubishi asked the Port to remove the item from the agenda to give them more time to speak with the local community.
In a statement, Mitsubishi said, “After meeting with community members over the past several months, we wanted to take additional time to engage with the community more directly and in a more substantive way… This state-of-the-art Cement Warehouse and Loading Facility will repurpose an existing on-terminal warehouse, create jobs and establish a local source of cement, which currently can only be obtained by being trucked in –long distances –from the high desert or the Port of Long Beach. This is an environmentally clean, electrified project, with an emissions reduction plan and installation of electric infrastructure that will support Port and community efforts to decrease local impacts and actually promote an environmentally cleaner Port.”
The facility would also create many working class jobs for those living nearby (the existing building and port).
I hope the discussion continues in a way that benefits all.
Ditto for me as to your last sentence. I hope it works out well for all with zero-emissions trucks and a way to keep the nose down.
Correction: “noise” not “nose”,
Frame it as a job-affirming, life-affirming development for the local residents, and green Jesuit leftists will be painted into a corner. Building the cement warehouse is a pro-life matter. The Jesuits are pro-life, aren’t they?
Unless the unions come in and take dues from the workers that go into funding Planned Parenthood and abortion. O well, I knew it was too good to be true. Should have kept my mouth shut.
While I am quite suspect of most Jesuit enterprise, especially in these latter years, this particular push seems to strike the right balance. An (NY) Rep. AOC would fight the whole project, (as per Amazon denied going into NYC), whereas this priest/parish family are saying YES to the warehouse and YES to cutting edge trucks. This need not be a lose/lose or even lose/win either/or. This is, or should be seen as WIN/WIN.
i would push for zero emissions
from the mouth of Jesuit James Martin
I just finished reading “Climate Miracle — There is no climate crisis — by Ed Berry, PhD. Those with common sense will “get it”
To say an EV (Electric Vehicle) is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid. All an EV does is move the emissions from the tailpipe to the power plant. Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.
A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells. All those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just – one – battery.
Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?
Whatever these folks is preachin’ – it AIN’T Catholicism.