HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-07-2021_ Open Session_Item 36_Gudis, Catherine_Warehouse Moratorium_RedactedFrom:Catherine Gudis
To:Public Comments
Subject:Warehouse Moratorium
Date:Wednesday, April 7, 2021 2:59:09 PM
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Dear City Council:
Enough is enough! San Bernardino has been overtaken by millions and millions of square feet
of warehouses. Researchers have documented the negative effects of warehouses:
they bring truck traffic that is detrimental to air quality and public health writ large;
The jobs they bring are often part time and/or temporary, without benefits or security
The jobs are not upwardly mobile—in fact, the opposite, as they resign residents to
continued poverty
They have created a mono-culture of jobs: all of the jobs seem to be in this one arena—
what happens to those jobs as warehouses like Amazon automate? The jobs are lost
Warehouses are detrimental to the environment. Among other things they:
Rely upon rail and truck to transport goods—adding necessity for more diesel and
PM2.5 pollution
add to “heat islands” by paving over so many cumulative miles of land;
Do not enable the absorption of water into land that is necessary to replenish
aquifers
Negatively impact poor and BIPOC neighborhoods in particular
Create more traffic just at the time when globally we are seeking to end fossil fuel
reliance
Please support the Warehouse moratorium!
Sincerely,
Catherine Gudis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History / Director, Public History Program
Teresa and Byron Pollitt Endowed Term Chair for Interdisciplinary Research and Learning in
the Humanities and Social Sciences
University of California, Riverside
Special Projects Partner, Boethius Initiative, UCLA
ACLS-Mellon Society & Scholars Fellow