ELA Residents: Get Out Your Inhalers
I-710 Long Beach Freeway to be double-decked
By
Gilbert Estrada
Published on LatinoLA:
April 12, 2003
East Los Angeles already has the highest concentration of freeways in America. Because of that, it is also one of the most polluted communities in the nation. How do we fix the problem? Add more lanes of freeway?
Eastside residents better start investing in new inhalers; more lanes of freeway are being planned in East Los Angeles.
An eighteen-mile stretch of the I-710 Long Beach Freeway (710), which runs from the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, the third largest port complex in the world, to the Pomona 60 Freeway in unincorporated East Los Angeles, is being slated for freeway ?improvements,? according to a consort of local organizations from Caltrans, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Southern California Association of Governments, and the Gateway Council of Governments. Several of these outstanding improvements involve the widening, resurfacing, and double-decking of the freeway.
Working under the label of the 710 Long Beach Freeway Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), the TAC has spent $3.9 million studying twelve possible alternatives. Planning has gone on since 2001. As of June of last year, it was narrowed to five; a final decision on which alternative to take will be made by June.
Three of the five alternatives involve significant widening of the freeway, up to 370 acres of community homes, businesses, and potential housing. Two of these three alternatives involve an inconceivable double decking of the freeway from the ports to East Los Angeles. Ignoring the fact that in 1989 the double decked San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway collapsed, or that a proposed price tag of $4 billion during the state?s financial $30 billion debt crisis is implausible, TAC is aggressively pursing these hard line double-decking options.
Why not finish the 2.2-mile stretch of 710 Freeway into South Pasadena before double-decking an entire eighteen-mile stretch of freeway through seventeen communities. Latino activists hint they have the answer: South Pasadena is approximately 70% White with a male annual income of $47,216. East Los Angeles is 96.3% Latino with a male annual income of only $21,010.
Expansion proposals have also been severely criticized because of poor outreach. The 710-expansion study has gone on for years, but few community members, if any, know about the project. Even people whose homes are potentially in the way of ?progress? have not been notified of the expansion efforts. Over $569,000 was slated for outreach, but when organizing a meeting for community groups in the South East Los Angeles Area for a February meeting, planners only notified one community group. Others only heard about it through Latino word of mouth: chisme.
The 710 Freeway is the busiest truck corridor in the state, also making it the most accident prone freeway in the state. Thirty-four thousand truck trips are made on the 710, carrying twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU)?s from the ports to rail yards in East Los Angeles and other local destinations. By 2020, diesel truck traffic is expected to increase by to 90,000 because of port expansion and an increase in TEU?s. Proponents of enlarging the freeway argue that TEU expansion must be accommodated by increased road space. But community members argue that this ?profits before people? strategy is exactly why communities along the 710 severely suffer from air pollution and increased cancer rates, largely because of diesel exhaust.
Community groups point out that diesel is a known carcinogen, with over 450 chemicals, more 40 causing cancer, according to the state of California. An increase in freeway lanes would mean an increase in diesel exhaust and increased health hazards where pollution standards along the freeway will be dismal at best.
East Los Angeles already bears an unfair burden of freeway encroachment in Los Angeles? freeway history. Nineteen percent of East Los Angeles land use is occupied by freeways; Los Angeles? freeway encroachment is only 4%.
As a result, air quality samples in East Los Angeles, are alarming. The South Coast Air Quality Management District?s 2000 study found that 90% of all pollution in our air is a result of mobile sources (i.e. cars, trucks, trains). Therefore, it does not take a genius to figure out that with seven freeways on the Eastside, East Los Angeles is a hub of mobile source emissions. Projects like the 710 double-decking effort will make health standards worst.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED:
Do not let this happen in our community. Be an important part of this process. Learn more!
? Communities for a Better Environment at 323.826.9711
? East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice at toltec9@hotmail.com
? http://www.gatewaycog.org
? Attend one of the final public hearings on: April 29, 6:00 p.m., Bell Gardens Intermediate School, 5841 Live Oak, Bell Gardens
About
Gilbert Estrada :
Gilbert Estrada writes on transportation isues. His M.A. thesis has been cited often: "How the East Was Lost: Mexican Fragmentation, Displacement and the East Los Angeles Freeway System, 1947-1972."
He can be reached at toltec9@hotmail.com
|
RSS
Feeds