Approaching three years into the Helen Tran Administration, San Bernardino City officials have now resolved to deal with one of the vestiges of the mayoral reign of John Valdivia. While there is relief among many that the city is at last dealing with a hazard and an eyesore that has gone unaddressed for too long, there is far from universal satisfaction with the means that will be used to make the fix, which a good cross section of the impacted public feels represents an environmental danger in and of itself.
The circumstance came about as part of an untoward arrangement that involved money passing into the hands of Valdivia, who was mayor from 2018 until 2022.
On June 5, 2020, a fire broke out in the 600,000-square foot Kuehne & Nagel warehouse, located in the 2200 block of West Lugonia Avenue in Redlands. The structure had served as a holding/distribution/dispatch facility for large items sold by on-line retail behemoth Amazon. The fire gutted the building, which was a total loss.
The concrete walls were torn down. Initial plans were to haul them off to whatever landfill would take them changed when Eric Cernich, the principal officer with Newport Beach-based Oxbow Communities, Inc. indicated he had a use for the over one thousand tons of fragmented concrete.
Some but not all of what occurred next is known, with some events opaque. Cernich ingratiated himself with Mayor Valdivia, first with a $750 donation to Valdivia’s campaign fund on July 14, 2020, which he followed up with another $750 installment on September 8, 2020. Greenleaf Engineering of Huntington Beach, owned by Tim Greenleaf, who had the contract for the demolition of the Kuehne & Nagel warehouse and relocating its concrete walls to San Bernardino, made an effort to get on Valdivia’s good side, providing his election fund with $2,000, likewise provided in two increments, in Greanleaf’s case, $1,000 each, one on October 2, 2020 and the other on October 7, 2020.
In August 2020, Verdemont District residents noted that dump trucks were transiting up Palm Avenue and depositing massive loads of the large shards and chunks of shattered concrete onto vacant land near the site of Oxbow Communities’ planned development of a 40-unit single family homes subdivision, which was to be built in cooperation with Jazzar Construction Group, which had at that time an option on the property. The project had been stalled out at least since 2018. Reportedly, one of the reasons the project had been suspended was that the land upon which the project was to be built was uneven and would require either intensive grading and then hillside reinforcement or the introduction of fill into the low-lying side of the property or its crevices to render it level. Cernich apparently believed the concrete could be used as fill when the project was at last revived.
For such a use, however, permits had to be secured, which entailed inspections beforehand for the process to be legitimate. Given that Valdivia was extending Cernich legal cover, however, there was an unwritten understanding at San Bernardino City Hall that there was no need to observe legal niceties and that both Cernich and Greenleaf, who had already gotten permission from Redlands officials to allow the concrete walls to be partially broken up at the Lugonia Avenue property, were to be allowed to import the shattered concreted to the Verdemont location, some 12.5 miles away from the burned-out Kuehne & Nagel warehouse as the crow flies or variously 15.6 miles or 18.3 miles distant via differing routes using the local freeway system. No permits were issued or required, and the concrete was deposited at the far extension of Palm Avenue in North San Bernardino’s Verdemont District, in proximity to Palm Elementary School and Tom Minor Park.
When they queried of San Bernardino city officials what was happening, nearby residents were told that Oxbow Communities had clearance from the city to utilize the concrete as fill. If they would just be patient, they were told, the concrete would be pulverized and ground into manageable-sized pieces and mixed with dirt to be thereafter compacted so it might disappear under the foundations of the homes that were to built and the yards and lawns that would eventually surround those homes.
When the wind kicked up in the funnel below Devore stretching south to San Bernardino, between, on the east, the Shandin Hills and, on the west, the badlands that stretch westward toward Lytle Creek, the people in the neighborhood found themselves, their houses, cars and pets peppered and pelted with dust and concrete fragments anywhere from the size of sand to pebbles. There was concern that the concrete itself was not stable physically or chemically and that it represented a safety and health hazard. When City Hall was met with complaints, then-City Manager Teri Ledoux at first sought to downplay the problem, offering an assurance that the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards contained in its Land Development and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System guidelines rated the concrete as a low-level or nonexistent health threat.
A number of those who live in proximity to the site, however, were not as sanguine. They wanted the city to take action.
Yet, just as political consideration, the perceived strength of then-Mayor Valdivia, was a major factor in creating the problem, political considerations played a significant role in preventing the circumstance from being alleviated.
The impacted property lies within the city’s Fifth Ward. The city is divided into seven wards, such that any single ward comprises only one-seventh or slightly more than 14 percent of the city’s body politic. Thus, those most directly impacted by the issue of the concrete had suffrage – a direct voting impact – on but one of the city council’s members and just one-seventh of the say in who is to be mayor. In 2000, Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel was defeated by challenger Ben Reynoso. Reynoso did not immediately come to terms with the issue or up to speed with all of its implication or what was entailed in the matter. Like Nickel, he was unable to form a consensus among the six other members of the council to take action. For starters, For two years, Valdivia remained as mayor. In addition, there remained the possibility that Cernich and Oxbow Communities would indeed undo the problem by proceeding with the project. That was not in the cards, but Cernich’s failure to execute was not known at that time.
The concern expressed about the potential environmental hazard of breaking up the concrete on site, to potentially include sawing it, pounding it to fragment it, crush it, grind it and/or pulverize it, however, did lead to the council making a resolution to utilize the concrete as block fill or remove it rather than to break it up.
In 2022, Valdivia failed in his effort to be reelected, becoming a lame duck in the aftermath of that year’s June primary election. Without a friend willing to cut corners for him, Cernich lost what little incentive he had to move forward with the project. The prospect that he would pay for the removal of the concrete was virtually nil. In this way, the city was going to have to bear the financial cost of removing the concrete and six-sevenths of the city council, with priorities other than pleasing the residents of the Fifth Ward, who have no power in voting for or against them, were unwilling to commit city funds to effectuate the removal.
Indeed, First Ward Councilman Ted Sanchez said he was convinced by his reading of the Environmental Protection Agency’s land development and national pollutant discharge standards and the related studies he had seen that the concrete represented no significant environmental threat and that its presence could merely be tolerated until it was eventually utilized in some development scheme for the property, whether by Oxbow Communities or some other landowner or developer.
In 2024, Reynoso was supplanted as Fifth Ward Council representative by Kim Knaus.
After five years of the concrete being in place, the city recently took up formulating a plan of action to get rid of it. Reversing the previous commitment not to grind it, the council seriously considered and ultimately approved a plan to crush the concrete.
Ultimately, the city council on October 15, with Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra absent from the meeting, voted 5-to-1 to crush the concrete where it now is, a field near Palm Avenue and West Verdemont Drive. Councilwoman Knaus joined with council members Sanchez, Juan Figueroa, Fred Shorett and Mario Flores in voting to remove the debris. Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz was opposed. Mayor Tran is not empowered to vote on normal policy items that come before the council, under San Bernardino’s municipal charter.
There was no information on how much the effort will cost. The concrete is to be smashed into piles of smaller rubble by a breaker and a crusher. The piles are to be arranged at various spots around the property to be used as fill for future projects.
For some, the breaking, crushing and retention of the material at the site represents a potential environmental and health issue. It is not entirely clear how much concrete dust will be liberated in the breaking and crushing process, although it admittedly will be substantially less than if the concrete were to be pulverized. Still, concrete dust, upon inhalation can lead to lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and other respiratory diseases and conditions.
Using water to anchor the dust is a standard practice to prohibit it from going airborne during smashing operations. Nevertheless, upon the water evaporating, the dust is subject to liberation during heavy winds.
City officials, at one level, straightforwardly acknowledged that all of its options in dealing with the concrete had a downside in that there was “not any ideal solution to removing or crushing the debris.” The report held that crushing the debris and keeping it in place on the property would avoid one negative health consequence, that being the use of trucks to remove the concrete remnants.
Knaus’s vote was made in the face of opposition by a number of her constituents being opposed to the on-site crushing.
Nickel maintained crushing the concrete and leaving it in place would create a health risk.
“Why would you repeal a resolution that prevents the crushing of concrete?” Nickel asked the council, telling its members, “You have a responsibility to protect the residents of this city, not to protect one developer.”
Knaus sought to deflect the opposition to the crushing by not acknowledging it. She suggested those in her district who did not want the concrete smashed and reduced into mounds of rubble rather than remaining as it is were a minute minority.
“I have to make decisions that are reflective and best of all of the Fifth Ward, not just a few who chose to come tonight,” Knaus said. She said that during her campaign last year, at various civic forums and her surveying of residents’ opinions, “Not one individual has opined [that] they did not want crushing. Not one.”
Councilwoman Ortiz, in her dissent from the council vote called for the concrete to be “properly recycled.” She said, “Crushing and grinding is a slap in the face to the residents who have had to endure this.”