The Quest to Green an Empire of Mega-Warehouses
Activists hope that a landmark environmental settlement and new truck emissions rules can help California’s smog-shrouded Inland Empire clean up its act.
A common sight on the roads of the Inland Empire: trucks shuttling goods to and from the region’s many warehouses.
Photo courtesy of Anthony Victoria
Joe Gross and his family have lived in Moreno Valley, California, for decades. He’s watched as the vast fields in front of his low-slung ranch home on Bay Avenue bloom with spring wildflowers. Part of a mainly rural expanse known as the Inland Empire, the land once supported citrus groves and a horse racing track, a nod to the horse farms that still dot the region. Now, however, a new crop has claimed it: e-commerce warehouses.
Gross will soon be neighbors with the World Logistics Center, a long-gestating, just-approved megadevelopment that will eventually encompass more than 40 million square feet of warehouse space, or the equivalent of 705 football fields.