The Los Alamitos City Council meeting on March 18 dealt at length with a proposal by Prologis, a 22 billion dollar international company, to build a 33 acre distribution center on the north side of Katella, to the east of Enterprise, in the city of Cypress. Prologis is asking the Los Alamitos City Council to install a left turn light on Katella to ease entry of hundreds of trucks a day into their site.
The City Council views this project as an issue for a small number of people in their “Carrier Row” neighborhood. In reality, this project threatens the health, safety, and lifestyles of citizens of a far larger neighborhood: Los Alamitos, Cypress, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Stanton, the owners and employees of area businesses and their customers, and anyone passing through.
The City Council has a chance to protect the larger community from completion of this project, as planned, since control of Katella is within their purview. Currently the Council members are trying to formulate and manage a city response, acting as individuals within the constraints of the Brown Act, and other legalities they must live with. They have been overwhelmed by this responsibility, due largely to their inability to coordinate outside their monthly meetings. They are relying on environmental impact report and California Environmental Quality Act requirements to provide a satisfactory result. This will almost certainly result in failure to deal effectively with the problem.
To see the future of our neighborhood when this facility is complete, drive down the Long Beach Freeway to the Harbor, at any time of day. The line of 18 wheelers waiting to get into the harbor, with their idling motors, is one of the largest air polluters in the country.
Without means of rapid egress and ingress, that disaster will be replicated here. Katella, from the 605 freeway to Enterprise, will become a clogged, 24-hour-a-day fountain of pollution. Kids going to and from school will walk through a cloud of diesel exhaust every morning and afternoon.
The magnitude of threat to our neighborhood demands more than the part time response the City Council is able to provide. The council is currently considering a “community give back” program, to return some portion of the city’s reserves, to the residents. This cash, on the order of several hundred thousand dollars, could be used to hire a law firm to enjoin this project, until traffic mitigation commensurate with the project is provided by Prologis.
The city of Los Alamitos has a chance to really impact the health and safety of a far larger population than Los Al alone. Taking the lead in this action would truly be an act of selflessness on the part of the citizens of Los Alamitos.
Ken Brown is a Rossmoor resident.
