Instead, a year ago, in a special meeting called shortly after Christmas, the airport authority commission voted to ratify the final details of a lease that allowed the airport expansion to proceed. Heredia joined a chorus of voices who protested at several public meetings and rallies, hoping that the airport authority commission would listen to residents’ concerns and halt the expansion. Last year, residents discovered that the San Bernardino International Airport Authority planned to allow an air cargo facility development at the airport, which would allow Amazon to operate even more flights out of the region. The unrelenting march of time has also taken its toll on residential neighborhoods where, in the stark daylight, even the festive holiday lights decorating people’s homes last month did little to mask the peeling paint, frayed edges, and parched lawns that hard times have brought.Īmazon’s new commercial building at the east end of the San Bernardino International Airport. In the hardest-hit areas, ghosts of the past linger along the city’s thoroughfares in the form of empty storefronts, fading budget motels, and blighted public spaces. Today, the city sits at a crossroads, both geographically and metaphorically. During that same 15-year period, the city of more than 215,000 people was battered by economic downturns, a bankruptcy, and high levels of poverty and violence.

“Most days the air is horrible, especially during the summer months where everything is just a hot blanket of smog,” Heredia told Grist.

That pollution weighs most heavily on residents of Heredia’s working-class, predominantly Latino neighborhood near the San Bernardino International Airport. Over the span of 15 years, he’s watched with dismay as massive warehouses have overtaken the area, leading to more truck traffic and ozone pollution. When Jorge Osvaldo Heredia moved to the Southern California city of San Bernardino in 2005, the logistics and warehouse industry was already encroaching on the neighborhood where he now lives.

Railway empire warehouse tips