The Meridian Gateway Aviation Center Project has been in the planning stages for four years, but its ramifications became the center of controversy with the release in May of a draft environmental impact report that profiled all aspects of the project.

“We believe the impacts will be negative,” Catherine Fischer of Murrieta told City News Service. “We want to keep this area nice. But the Inland Empire already has some of the worst air pollution in the country. The sky is supposed to be blue, not dark brown. With Gateway, we’ll have not only more airplanes emitting pollution, but all the diesel trucks. It’s so damaging to our health, especially our children’s.”

Fischer’s group, Community Alliance for Riverside’s Economy & Environment, CAREE, has been sounding the alarm on Gateway’s potential downsides, mailing thousands of “Save March” circulars, asking residents to contact the March Joint Powers Authority Commission to express their concerns.

The group cited many of the points contained in the draft EIR, a nearly 700-page document that generated more than 200 comments.

One of the EIR’s highlights was the “significant and unavoidable” finding tied to aircraft noise. Under the current operations model, Gateway would lead to 128 additional two-way flights every month, and during the Holiday Season, that would increase to 256 flights. The total number comes to over 10,000 more arrivals and departures annually, all involving cargo aircraft at the March Inland Port Airport, the section of the base dedicated to civilian functions.

Riverside-based environmental consulting firm Dudek, which prepared the EIR, noted the traditionally accepted baseline noise levels tied to commercial operations is 65 decibels during the day and 60 at night. If Gateway goes live, some residential areas near March could experience peak noise levels closer to 70, the study found.

The EIR also pointed to inevitable increases in pollutants, acknowledging the “project would exceed operational regional thresholds of significance for volatile organic compounds, oxides of nitrogen and carbon monoxide emissions.”

The project site is within a tract designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1991 as a priority for Superfund Program rehabilitation due to the “use, storage and disposal of hazardous materials and waste.”

The area immediately surrounding the base has been ranked between 78 and 98 on the CalEnviroScreen tabulator that identifies pollutant impacts to disadvantaged communities. It’s an inverse scoring method, so a higher score — one over 50 — reflects “a higher pollution burden,” according to the California Environmental Protection Agency.

The EIR said greater emissions would be inevitable with more aircraft and more trucks in and out of the docking bays of the proposed 180,000-square- foot warehouse where the planes would be delivering and retrieving loads.

“There’s the airplane noise, traffic and the pollution that, overall, would be degrading to our quality of life here,” said Chris Bardeen, a chemistry professor at UC Riverside who has lived in the Mission Grove area of the city, beneath March’s flight paths, for 20 years. “There’s a bigger effect on health. What sticks in my craw is these guys could come in and ignore the community’s concerns, do a poor job on the EIR and still probably get everything they want. Once they build this, we’d have no power whatsoever.”

The CAREE activists challenged cargo hauler DHL when it was utilizing March as a west coast hub in the 2000s. Aircraft noise at all hours was a major complaint, brought before the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. DHL pulled up stakes during the Great Recession. Amazon is now a major user of the March Inland Port Airport.

“If the residents surrounding March are going to be subjected to more aircraft noise, I’d prefer to have that noise from military aircraft, performing national security operations,” Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, who sits on the March JPA Commission, told CNS. “Developing vacant land on the base, adjacent to the military runway, for the purpose of private sector cargo flights would seem only to complicate future military flight operations.”

Jeffries’ fellow supervisor and JPA Commission member Yxstian Gutierrez did not respond to requests for comment, nor did any of the council members from Moreno Valley and Perris. Riverside City Councilman Jim Perry told CNS his staff “is still in the process” of analyzing the EIR.

Fischer and Bardeen said there’s a nexus between Gateway and a nearby industrial park development, the 800-acre West Campus Upper Plateau, which is proposed in JPA-controlled space west of Interstate 215. Elements of the same consortium are spearheading both projects.

“Warehouses near an air cargo port generate more income,” Fischer said.

One of the co-developers of the projects, Upland-based Lewis Group, said they’re “completely independent” of one another.

“We are very supportive of the (Gateway) project,” Lewis Group Vice President Randall Lewis told CNS. “Gateway is consistent with the goals of the March JPA General Plan. It supports March ARB through infrastructure enhancements. The proposed flight operations comply with the existing joint-use agreement. The benefits that Gateway will provide will (improve) the region for many years to come.”

March JPA CEO Grace Martin said Gateway, as with all projects proposed to the JPA, is undergoing a thorough “vetting process.” The final EIR, due out next year, will be left to the JPA Commission to consider, and based on that, make modifications to the plans or reject them altogether.

The post Pollution, Noise Concerns Surface In March Air Base Jet Port Proposal appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Trump is slated to deliver remarks at 5 p.m. Oct. 12. The event takes place at Calhoun Ranch, 52995 Calhoun Street, Coachella.

During the rally, the former president is expected to paint a bleak picture for Golden State residents about their state, according to the narrative of an Oct. 7 news release from the Trump campaign.

Doors for the upcoming event open at 1 p.m., according to the campaign. General admission tickets are available here.

While Trump supporters will welcome the visit, some Coachella Valley leaders are not.

Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez released a statement Monday afternoon unfavorably comparing Trump’s planned rally to a 2020 primary campaign event held by Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom he said the city was “proud to welcome.”

“Trump’s attacks on immigrants, women, the LQBTQ community and the most vulnerable among us don’t align with the values of our community,” Hernandez said. “He has consistently expressed disdain for the type of diversity that helps define Coachella. We don’t know why Trump is visiting near Coachella, but we know he wasn’t invited by the people who live here. He ain’t like us.”

Congressman Dr. Raul Ruiz announced his strong opposition to Trump’s planned visit.

“It’s truly appalling — and yet another demonstration of his cluelessness and ignorance — that Donald Trump would stage a rally in Coachella,” Ruiz said.

“Under a second Trump administration, there is literally no place in America that would be harmed more than the Coachella Valley,” Ruiz continued. “His proposed tariffs would cause another trade war, costing farmers and farmworkers hundreds of millions of dollars in exports and jeopardizing thousands of jobs. His hate-driven immigration policy would decimate the local workforce in agriculture, construction, and hospitality, severely harming families and businesses alike – including some of the businesses that support him. His ignorant opposition to clean energy would destroy local wind and solar businesses, as well as the emerging industries developing in the Salton Sea. And his repeated attempts to dismantle Obamacare would take away health care from thousands of local residents. Donald Trump — and his policies — are an affront to everything that makes the Coachella Valley a vibrant community.”

Coachella City Councilman Frank Figueroa, who Congressman Ruiz endorsed for mayor, echoed the Congressman’s remarks.

“I’m disappointed that Trump is bringing his brand of divisiveness to Coachella. Trump is a threat to our shared values, his policies would decimate Coachella and surrounding communities, and he is an affront to the diversity we have cultivated here. Hate has no home in Coachella,” Figueroa said.

Indio City Councilman Waymond Fermon agreed.

“It’s hard to imagine a politician who represents our communities and our values worse than Donald Trump. He is a threat to our needs and to democracy itself. I certainly will not be attending this rally, and I would discourage everyone else from attending as well,” Fermon said.

Trump was last in Southern California in mid-September, attending a fundraiser in Beverly Hills and holding a news conference at his golf resort in Rancho Palos Verdes. He was also in the area in June, again attending private fundraisers in Beverly Hills and Newport Beach.

Prior to that, he had not been in Southern California since Sept. 29-30, 2023, when he spoke at the California Republican Party Fall Convention in Anaheim and attended a fundraiser in Costa Mesa.

Trump’s son Eric headlined a May fundraiser in Temecula for the conservative Inland Empire Family PAC. Read more here.

The post Former President Trump Scheduled To Appear At Riverside County Rally appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.