Superior Court Judge Ronald Bauer has rejected a request from the City of Riverside that would have shut down work on expansion of the China Shipping Terminal at the Port of Los Angeles and forced the port to redo its Environmental Impact Report.
In its lawsuit brought against the port, Riverside argued that expansion of the terminal would result in more cargo at the port and more eastbound double-stack trains passing through the City of Riverside, about 50 miles inland. The impact on traffic and environment in Riverside was not adequately considered in the port's Environmental Impact Report for the project, the action charged.
Riverside has argued that the port should help pay for road-rail grade separations in Riverside to mitigate those impacts.
The judge, in a ruling handed down last week, rejected port arguments that the impacts of rail traffic in Riverside generated by the project were "too tenuous and speculative to require evaluation."
"Wisely, the respondents did not cling too tightly to that position," the judge said.
"A rock dropped into a smooth pond can cause ripples on distant shores," the judge noted. "Here each of the links between the port and Riverside are factually demonstrated. None of them is speculative."
The port, however, did consider the impact of the project on Riverside in its EIR, the judge acknowledged. Although attorneys representing the port made some "artless missteps" in their arguments, the fact was the port did consider the impact on Riverside in its EIR and made some justified conclusions.
The City of Riverside may not like the conclusions the port reached, but that was beside the point, the judge said.
Although the judge went off on a philosophic tangent about how consumers - many of them in the Riverside area - were actually the driver of cargo coming through the ports, he cautioned that those thoughts were not "part of the court's legal reasoning for its decision, but is merely its rambling musings on the subject."
Original Complaint
Judge's Ruling
-- The Cunningham Report
