In the unincorporated San Bernardino County community of Bloomington, warehouse walls loom over homes and schools, obstructing access to what used to be open sky and green fields. As part of a recent toxic waste site tour, gubernatorial candidate Betty Yee spent time with community members and environmental advocates from Bloomington and the Inland region. 

The group stood directly across not only from an operating warehouse, but a massive lot being developed into the Bloomington Business Park, as Xochitl Pedraza, a resident described watching her neighborhood disappear without warning.

“We started seeing a lot of changes, a lot of warehouses coming,” Pedraza said. “But then we never really got… notified that that was something coming. Since we don’t have a city, we don’t have a council, it means [it’s] hard to go to all those supervisor meetings.” 

On this tour, Yee was able to walk those same streets – where residents say regional economic development has turned their town into a sacrifice zone.

Many of the residents still living in Bloomington are directly affected by a court‑ordered pause on the controversial logistics project. Yet, residents say they were shut out of the decision‑making process from the start due to language barriers and lack of notice. Information regarding rezoning and new projects often arrived in English only, in a community where many speak primarily Spanish. Board of Supervisor meetings hosted during work hours also created obstacles.

Families like Pedraza’s have built their lives here – many adopting a semi-rural lifestyle with chickens and other livestock in their backyards. They say changes have been jarring; homes that once backed up to open space now stand in the shadow of warehouses, truck traffic and loading docks.

In Bloomington, the warehouse boom collides with a democracy gap. With no city council of their own, residents must take their concerns to county supervisors whose meetings are held miles away, typically on weekday mornings while many are at work. 

The toxic tour stop forced state‑level attention on a fight that has played out for years in hearing rooms and court filings. For the people who invited the candidate in, the question is whether the next governor will change the rules – on warehouses siting near schools, on language access and public notice, and on how much input communities like Bloomington have- in shaping their own future.

Yee said that engaging investors could be one way to address the issue. Based on her experience serving on a pension board, she noted that she is familiar with Brookfield, which is currently backing the project. She also raised questions about the project’s investment standards and suggested that the company’s institutional investors may be bound by responsible investment policies.

“The expansiveness of this is what I can’t get over,” Yee said.