The Inland Empire

Warehousing, Supply & Logistics, the Environment and Jobs

After shipping containers are unloaded at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, much of the cargo makes its way 90 km northeast to California’s Inland Empire. This region, which includes San Bernardino and Riverside, is home to nearly 5 million people and roughly 4,000 warehouses. These warehouses, and their adjacent parking lots, cover about 140 square kilometers, an area larger than San Francisco. The Inland Empire has been a logistics hub since the early 2000s but “the ecommerce boom of the pandemic accelerated the land grab, and the region became ever more hardscaped.”

The growth of the logistics industry is a point of contention in the region, with economic development in constant tension with public health and environmental degradation. The sector has created tens of thousands of jobs, although the median wages are relatively low: $18.57 an hour for warehouse workers and $24.93 for truck drivers. Meanwhile, the diesel truck traffic has meant that counties in the Inland Empire have some of the worst air quality in the US. This 2022 video features a high school in Fontana, California that is flanked by warehouses, spurring community concern for students’ health; last month, the city blocked a warehouse development adjacent to another school. Communities in the Inland Empire pushed for a regional moratorium on warehouse development earlier this year, but the bill was unsuccessful.

by Hillary Predko, Scope of Work | Read more:
Images: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times
[ed. Coming to a community near you soon. See also: Warehouse boom transformed Inland Empire. Are jobs worth the environmental degradation? (LA Times); also, the video referenced above - How online shopping is polluting California’s Inland Empire (YT):