The settlement came nine months after the attorney general accused Fontana of violating the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by approving a 205,000-square-foot warehouse that would neighbor Jurupa Hills High School.
During the official Fontana response, Mayor Acquanetta Warren said that the city and developer had done nothing wrong and hadn't broken any CEQA regulations. "There were no CEQA violations. This allegation was that the project failed to properly consider the full impacts of this industrial development," Warren said.
The warehouse will still be built, but as part of the agreement, Fontana passed an industrial ordinance requiring all new warehouses to have a landscape buffer and zero-emission on-site equipment.
Mayor Warren also wanted to make clear that the ordinance was the city's idea. "Regardless of what you may have heard, I want to be clear our great counsel initiated this analysis and ordinance examination long before the Attorney General filed anything," Warren said.
Despite that claim, not all city officials agree. "They wrote this ordinance to counter the AG's lawsuit," said Fontana Councilmember Jesse Sandoval. Sandoval has frequently been at odds with Mayor Warren and the rest of the city council. "They knew that they were out of compliance, but they wanted to hit something that was going to satisfy the AG before the AG even got its wheel spinning," Sandoval said.
Other aspects of the city agreement include the developer having to reduce its on-site emissions and funding a five-year supply of air filters to over 1,700 neighboring households.
