1:00pm | Gabrielle Weeks, chair of the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter Long Beach Area Group, calls claims that 7th District Councilmember James Johnson “has failed to represent his constituents in matters of the environment [are] simply not true.”

On its website, the Recall James Johnson Committee list among the reasons Johnson should be recalled “failing to represent constituent’s health and safety concerns (regarding the Port, 710 freeway expansion and rail yard expansions)” and “failing to act to protect the health, safety and welfare of his constituents.”

Not so, says Weeks. “Councilmember Johnson has been an enthusiastic supporter of environmental causes,” she writes in a letter to the Long Beach Post. “His leadership led to a study of air pollution at the airport and a greywater pilot program that could lead to significant water savings for our city. James’s vision for California Gardens has resulted in a 4 acre park with master planning for 43 more acres about to begin. He voted to ban throwaway plastic bags. He secured $1.1 million to build a barrier next to the Terminal Island Freeway in order to keep pollution away from the schools and parks of West Long Beach and the rest of the city.”

When contacted several weeks ago by the Long Beach Post for a response, a spokesperson for the Recall James Johnson Committee said Weeks “is not seeing the forest for all the trees — which is surprising for someone from the Sierra Club.”

Per the Committee’s request, the Long Beach Post forwarded Weeks’s letter to them so they could draft a rebuttal, but we never received that a rebuttal.

However, a press release from the Committee accuses Johnson of repeatedly flip-flopping his position “on the proposed rail yard expansion to Intermodal Container Transfer Facility and the proposed Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) rail yard adjacent to his West Long Beach 7th District neighborhoods. … With the release of the Draft EIR, Johnson was forced to go back on his campaign promise to oppose the expansions, Johnson began ‘green-washing’ his position and the expansion by calling to allow the rail yards to proceed with his utopian Zero-Emissions.”

However, the release continues, upon the release of an Environmental Impact Report stating that “Zero Emissions Container Movement System has not yet reached the point of being technologically or economically feasible,” Johnson “was forced to flip-flop back to his original campaign opposition to the facility … misrepresent[ing] his zig zag history on the rail yards with this statement: ‘This proposal that was released yesterday is no green growth. The proposal is more of the same. For that reason I remain opposed to this project as I have been for 14 months of being on the city council. I fully expect the city council to join me in opposition to this project as we discuss it in the coming months.’”

(Read the entire press release here.)

Weeks reads Johnson’s position as his having “worked to have the City Council and the Harbor Commission [to] demand zero emissions in any future growth. He opposed the proposed rail yard projects that increase truck traffic and diesel emissions in West Long beach. … James Johnson has been an environmental steward and he has the continued
support of the Sierra Club.”

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