California Attorney General Rob Bonta attends a listening session in Fresno's Calwa community in August. Photo by Edward Smith

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is putting in his two cents on a rezone issue going before the Fresno City Council Thursday, advising the body to reject an application to revert the zoning of land in Southwest Fresno.

The Council will hear a request from landowners and tenants on 92 acres to return land back to industrial zoning from neighborhood mixed use. The Southwest Fresno Specific Plan designated large land tracts from industrial to neighborhood mixed use to mitigate pollution and bring more services to the area.

“Southwest Fresno contains some of the most over-burdened and under-invested environmental justice communities in all of California,” said Bonta. “In 2017, the City of Fresno undertook a long-overdue, years-long project to address the heavy pollution burden falling on Southwest Fresno communities – eventually rezoning multiple parcels of land to less intensive uses. The city’s proposal to rezone this land once again is misguided, and I urge the City Council to abandon this likely unlawful proposal.”

Bonta called the proposal “misguided and potentially unlawful,” saying it could violate the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, and the city’s mandatory duty to affirmatively further fair housing.

In August, Bonta came to Calwa to hear from residents throughout the Valley to hear about challenges they face in the area.

The release stated that the community is over 95% non-white, with extremely high rates of poverty and unemployment, “facing serious shortages of affordable housing.” Bonta also noted high levels of asthma, low birth weight and cardiovascular disease.

The attorney general’s office has long taken a stance in Fresno’s zoning issues, going back as far as a 2018 proposal from Caglia Environmental to develop warehouse space at Northpointe Business Park. Then-attorney general Xavier Becerra intervened after the project received unanimous support from the Fresno City Council, according to GV Wire.