Hidden Canyon Letter to the Editor

Written by Geoffrey Wilson, Reprinted from the Record Gazette.

To the Editor,

Last Tuesday I attended the Beaumont City Council meeting where a massive warehouse project of 2.8 million square feet called “Hidden Canyon” was approved, despite having an outdated EIR.

Only Mayor Pro Tem White voted against it based on the fact that the EIR had lapsed and should therefore be rejected.

The upside for Beaumont, if you can call it that, is some temporary construction jobs followed by temporary warehouse jobs and a $9 million payment to the City presumably developer fees which would help reduce the deficit.

The developer, from Newport Beach, had sent a group of young lawyers one of whom assured us that the buildings would hardly be noticed as they intended to plant a “forest” of trees around them, which would appear to be a risky business as there is no Fire Station south of the 60 or I-10 freeways.

The developer fees for that ended up a very long way from Beaumont! The giveaway as to the location of the warehouses will be 5,000 truck trips a day and we are talking 18-wheelers here not pickups.
So Beaumont has joined the warehouse club along with many others along the I-10, which will bring low paying jobs and more dirty air trapped against the mountains causing health problems and traffic accidents.
What happened to the idea of converting trucks to natural gas so they don’t choke everyone or is President Obama too focused on giving everyone a bathroom of their choice depending on how they feel on any given day?
We are told that the I-10 corridor is ideally situated for e-commerce but surely the Orange County crowd would love to have some warehouses of their own, they could get their packages so much quicker.
We all shoulder some blame as we continue to demand the lowest price for everything and order from the likes of Amazon or Walmart who fail to pay their employee’s living wages while the stock holders and Corporate executives enrich themselves.

However there are hidden costs to taxpayers who foot the bill for Medi-Cal and food stamps so, as I have said before, we may not be getting as low a price as we thought.
Geoffrey Wilson, Beaumont