The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just handed communities a powerful new way to hold nearby warehouses accountable for the pollution they create.
Until recently, air quality regulations largely overlooked tailpipe pollution choking neighborhoods near sprawling warehouses. Warehouses may not have smokestacks releasing pollutants that the EPA and local agencies typically regulate. But they do attract a steady stream of trucks. It’s a problem the warehouse wouldn’t necessarily have been held accountable for since old-school regulations focused on pollutants coming from the facility itself.
That changed with a landmark policy in Southern California called the Warehouse Indirect…