Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Bernie Sanders and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra are the latest public figures to implore the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct a full environmental study of the Eastgate Air Cargo Logistics Center planned for San Bernardino International Airport.

Their support comes two months after former Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Kamala Harris wrote a letter to Mark McClardy, FAA Western-Pacific Region Airports Division director, requesting a probe of the project’s possible environmental effects on neighboring communities.

Bound for a 101-acre lot west of Victoria Avenue and south of Third Street, the Eastgate logistics center, a nearly 700,000-square-foot sorting facility at the former Norton Air Force Base, is expected to provide about 4,000 jobs and generate millions of dollars in revenue within five years, airport officials have said.

Amazon is a rumored tenant.

In his Nov. 26 letter to McClardy and Mark Gibbs, the airport’s aviation director, Becerra writes that the Draft Environmental Assessment submitted to the FAA earlier this year does not mention the significant and unavoidable impacts to air quality, climate change and noise identified by airport officials during a 2018 environmental review of the project.

The FAA must consider those impacts, Becerra writes, and whether the facility will interfere with Assembly Bill 617, a community emissions reduction plan for the nearby San Bernardino-Muscoy community.

“Preparation of an (Environmental Impact Statement),” Becerra writes, “will afford the agencies an extended opportunity to work with the local community to jointly develop mitigation measures to improve the project and reduce its effects on the community.

“The agencies’ decision to prepare an EIS,” Becerra continues, “will itself trigger a public participation process in which the community can help determine the scope of issues that should be addressed.”

Throughout the eight-page letter, Becerra illustrates instances the Draft Environmental Assessment either underestimates pollution impacts noted by airport officials last year or omits them entirely.

Of note, the Draft EA estimates that the project would generate 192 truck trips in its initial year of operation and 500 truck trips at full operation. However, according to the airport authority’s analysis, Becerra writes, trucks will make 248 round trips in the first year and 652 at full operation.

The Draft EA, he continues, fails to offer any explanation for the discrepancies and thus violates the agencies’ obligation under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, to provide sufficient evidence and analysis to justify their final determinations.

Furthermore, the Draft EA failed to analyze whether truck traffic generated by the project is likely to navigate the nearby San Bernardino-Muscoy community, an impoverished community of color, Becerra writes, that is “especially vulnerable to the effects of pollution.”

“The community’s asthma rates are among the worst in the state,” Becerra continues, “which both is caused by exposure to air pollution and can make the community more vulnerable to air pollution.”

As such, a community emissions reduction program for the San Bernardino-Muscoy community spurred by Assembly Bill 617 is in the final stages of approval. A failure to evaluate the project’s conformity with AB 617, Becerra writes, violates the agencies’ obligation under NEPA to consider whether the project “threatens a violation” of local requirements.

“We recommend the agencies thoroughly consider mitigation measures rerouting project trucks away from the community as well as other measures that support community strategies to reduce emissions from truck traffic and warehouses.”

Less than a week after Becerra wrote the FAA, protestors on Cyber Monday, Dec. 2, gathered outside Amazon’s San Bernardino distribution center to decry the company’s “poor labor practices and negative effects on local air quality.”

On Wednesday, Dec. 4, Sanders backed the local coalition behind the early-morning protest, tweeting: “We can only transform this country by building a movement of workers, affected communities, and local leaders.

He added: “I’m proud to stand with (San Bernardino Airport Communities) and (the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice) as they stand … against a possible Amazon project at the San Bernardino Airport.”

Sanders’ tweet had more than 450 retweets and 1,700 likes by midday Friday, Dec. 6.

“It’s great that our concerns are getting outside attention because we have seen that internally, our local politicians have yet to take a position on this,” Andrea Vidaurre, a policy analyst for the Jurupa Valley-based Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, said by phone Friday. “This should signal to them that what we’re dealing with is something very serious, something that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

“We appreciate the support from Sen. Sanders and the attorney general,” Vidaurre added. “It shows that what’s happening here is something worth fighting for.”