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Proposed jet port at March Air Base prompts noise, pollution concerns
VOL. 8,
San Bernardino County gets $11.8M for homeless shelters, housing
By Paul J. Young, City News Service
By Staff
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proposed 34-acre development on March Air Reserve Base that would significantly expand civilian flight operations is meeting opposition from area residents concerned about rising levels of noise and pollution, while one of the firms backing the venture argues it's compatible with the base's purposes. The Meridian Gateway Aviation Center Project has been in the planning stages for four years, but its ramifications became the center of controversy with the release in May of a draft environmental impact report that profiled all aspects of the project. "We believe the impacts will be negative," Catherine Fischer of Murrieta told City News Service. "We want to keep this area nice. But the Inland Empire already has some of the worst air pollution in the country. The sky is supposed to be blue, not dark brown. With Gateway, we'll have not only more airplanes emitting pollution, but all the diesel trucks. It's so damaging to our health, especially our children's." Fischer's group, Community Alliance for Riverside's Economy & Environment, CAREE, has been sounding the alarm on Gateway's potential downsides, mailing thousands of "Save March" circulars, asking residents to contact the March Joint Powers Authority Commission to express their concerns. The group cited many of
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he county has been awarded an $11.82 million state grant to create temporary shelters and permanent housing at the Pacific Village homeless services campus in San Bernardino, officials announced last week. The Pacific Village housing complex is a fullservice Continuum of Care facility that offers health care and housing options to county residents experiencing homelessness. The funding via the fifth round of Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grants from the
California Department of Housing and Community Development will enable the county to expand housing, support rapid rehousing efforts, provide supportive services and bolster homeless outreach operations. “Receiving this funding is an extraordinary step toward addressing the homelessness crisis in our region and making a meaningful impact in providing supportive services to those experiencing homelessness,” Board of Supervisors Chairman and 3rd District Supervisor Dawn Rowe said in a statement.
A U.S. Air force C-17 Globemaster III cargo jet. | Photo courtesy of Gerard van der Schaaf/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
the points contained in the draft EIR, a nearly 700-page document that generated more than 200 comments. One of the EIR's highlights was the "significant and unavoidable" finding tied to aircraft noise. Under the current operations model, Gateway would lead to 128 additional two-way flights every month, and during the Holiday Season, that would increase to 256 flights. The total number comes to over 10,000 more arrivals and departures annually, all involving cargo aircraft at the March Inland Port Airport, the section of the base dedicated to civilian functions. Riverside-based environmental consulting firm Dudek, which prepared the EIR, noted the traditionally accepted baseline noise levels tied to commercial operations is 65 decibels during the day and 60 at
night. If Gateway goes live, some residential areas near March could experience peak noise levels closer to 70, the study found. The EIR also pointed to inevitable increases in pollutants, acknowledging the "project would exceed operational regional thresholds of significance for volatile organic compounds, oxides of nitrogen and carbon monoxide emissions." The project site is within a tract designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1991 as a priority for Superfund Program rehabilitation due to the "use, storage and disposal of hazardous materials and waste." The area immediately surrounding the base has been ranked between 78 and 98 on the CalEnviroScreen tabulator that identifies pollutant impacts to disad-
See Homeless shelters Page 13
vantaged communities. It's an inverse scoring method, so a higher score — one over 50 — reflects "a higher pollution burden," according to the California Environmental Protection Agency. The EIR said greater emissions would be inevitable with more aircraft and more trucks in and out of the docking bays of the proposed 180,000-squarefoot warehouse where the planes would be delivering and retrieving loads. "There's the airplane noise, traffic and the pollution that, overall, would be degrading to our quality of life here," said Chris Bardeen, a chemistry professor at UC Riverside who has lived in the Mission Grove area of the city, beneath March's flight paths, for 20 years. "There's a bigger effect on health. What sticks
man who killed an 18-year-old woman, a witness to his attempted murder on her boyfriend, was sentenced to death Tuesday. Alexis Daniel Rosas of Indio, 29, was previously convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder, along with the two special circumstance allegations and sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations for the 2019 slaying of Makayla Jean Massey, also known as Anita Garcia, of Victorville.
See Air base Page 27
See Crime Page 28
Indio man who killed crime witness sentenced to death By City News Service
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John Hall of the Riverside County District Attorney's Office confirmed the terms of the sentence to City News Service. Rosas' girlfriend, 32-yearold Maury Duarte, was convicted in June of firstdegree murder and special circumstance allegations of killing a witness to a crime and lying in wait, as well as being an accessory to a felony. She was sentenced in August to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury recommended capital punishment for Rosas