AlterNet: Boatloads of Trouble: How We Are Importing Our Way to Destruction

Boatloads of Trouble: How We Are Importing Our Way to Destruction

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted September 5, 2008.

As our consumer goods travel thousands of miles by boat, train and truck, they're leaving a trail of soot and cancer in their wake.



Nineteen hundred miles of railroad track separate Gardner, Kan., from the seaports of Southern California. But through the miracle of global trade, Gardner will soon be transformed into a Los Angeles suburb.

Over the next decade, an "intermodal and logistics park" will be built on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway at the southern edge of Gardner. It's needed to handle goods imported from Asia via the Los Angeles and Long Beach seaports. Gardner could eventually find itself playing host to as many as 30 freight trains per day, each a mile and a half long, along with thousands of big-rig trucks.

The community of 16,000, just across the state line from Kansas City, Mo., will eventually be sandwiched between 7 million square feet of warehouses in the logistics park to the south and 4 million to 5 million square feet in an industrial park to the north. The total warehouse floor space easily exceeds that of all the housing in Gardner.

And Claud Hobby, who will be living about three-fourths of a mile from the new facility, can already feel the burn of diesel fumes in his nostrils. The pollution will be growing thicker over his neighborhood with each passing year, but he's trying to keep his sense of humor. He says, "They talk about making Kansas a smoke-free state, but it looks like Gardner's going to be the designated smoking section."

With environmentalists devoting most of their efforts in recent years to sounding the alarm on global climate change, local pollution isn't always getting the attention it deserves. But if you share your neighborhood with the sprawling -- and growing -- infrastructure that moves imported goods from seaports to retailers, you can't help but pay attention. You don't need to be reminded that air pollutants, even when they're not warming the planet, can threaten your health and even your life. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/97496/boatloads_of_trouble%3A_how_we_are_importing_our_way_to_destruction/