“The fact that it’s been ongoing for so many years has changed the reality — people are getting sick, and we can’t go in the ocean or beach, and this habitat is dying — all these things reflect a state of emergency.”
By Quinn Welsch, Courthouse News Service
California public officials, scientists and coastal advocates rang the alarm over the continued pollution of the Tijuana River into the Pacific Ocean and nearby communities on the Mexican border, describing the situation as one of the worst public health and environmental disasters in the country and around the world.
“Since 2018, over 200 billion gallons of sewage have crossed our border,” Paloma Aguirre, who serves on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, told an audience at a California Senate Environmental Quality Committee hearing in San Diego. “That is a gigantic amount of sewage you don’t hear about anywhere in our nation. It is the biggest public health and environmental crisis in the western hemisphere.”
She said the situation has been compared to the public water crisis in Flint, Michigan, a national scandal that exposed failures in the government and left that city’s residents without safe drinking water for years.
“To me, this seems like it would be a state of emergency,” California Senator Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas, who was appointed to the Senate Environmental Quality Committee earlier this year, told reporters. “The fact that it’s been ongoing for so many years has changed the reality — people are getting sick, and we can’t go in the ocean or beach, and this habitat is dying, and all these things reflect a state of emergency.”
The Thursday hearing invited a series of panelists to explain the multifaceted issue to the public, including oceanographers, air pollution experts and public health experts, among others. Blakespear was joined by fellow Democrat U.S. Senator Alex Padilla and California Republican Senator Brian Jones of Santee.
The Tijuana River pollution has plagued the beaches of San Diego County for decades, as sewage, trash and industrial waste flow through the river valley and into the Pacific Ocean and its communities. It is estimated that 40 million gallons of rancid sewage are dumped into the Pacific Ocean every day, totaling billions of gallons per year, according to the San Diego Coastkeeper.
“The reality is we are living consistently with this crisis,” said Aguirre, who also served as the mayor of Imperial Beach, which has been heavily affected by the pollution. “Our beaches have now been closed almost for four years consistently.”
Beaches have been closed up and down San Diego’s coast, particularly in its South Bay communities, but the tides have also brought the contamination into more affluent communities, including nearby Coronado.
“If there’s 20,000 gallons of sewage spills in LA, it’s a crisis,” said Serge Dedina, a panelist and another former mayor of Imperial Beach, California, which sits just a couple miles north of the Mexican border. “When a billion gallons spill in South Bay, no one cares.”
The situation is similar for the city of Tijuana, he said.
“This is one of the most important ocean migratory corridors in the entire world, and we have decided to turn it into a toxic waste dump,” Dedina said.
Imperial Beach’s current mayor, Mitch McKay, echoed Dedina’s concerns. Previous attempts to have a state of emergency declared have failed, he told Courthouse News.
“We’ve had a lack of support from the Governor’s Office,” he said. “Here we are, two years later, and there are other electeds trying to get funds for something that should have been done two years ago. I’m cautiously optimistic.”
Blakespear’s team also toured a pollution hot spot on the Tijuana River near Imperial Beach, where drain pipes churned out gallons of polluted water that bubbled into a thick foam. The chemicals are the likely result of industrial waste and sewage from Mexico.
The chemicals can cause headaches, nausea, burning eyes and other adverse effects, panelists said. It is most frequent at night and can wake nearby residents from their sleep.
The pollutants from the river may also be having an adverse effect on the nearby communities as well. Public health and environmental panelists said that they need to study the issue more.
State officials referred to the hot spot as low-hanging fruit that the state should be able to clean up without federal help.
Ten thousand air purifiers were recently provided to homes and schools in the Imperial Beach area to protect residents from the chemical pollutants, though officials say that another 30,000 are needed.
The pollution has largely been a result of rapid population growth and aging infrastructure in the city of Tijuana.
Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was meeting its goals towards reducing the amount of sewage dumped into the ocean after it released its first quarterly public update on efforts to implement a permanent 100% solution to the crisis.
Officials from both countries reported progress that includes a recently completed 10-million-gallon-per-day expansion of a wastewater plant, as well as new sewer infrastructure in Mexico. Additionally, officials from both countries said that the timeline for other projects under the International Boundary and Water Commission has been reduced.
Under a new agreement signed earlier this year, Mexico must complete all of its critical infrastructure projects under the IBWC by December 2027. Mexico must also sign a new agreement before the year ends that lists 12 new actions to permanently solve the sewage crisis.
About half a billion dollars has been appropriated between the United States and Mexico to fix the problem.
EPA officials said the timeline for these projects is ahead of schedule.
The next quarterly update on the sewage crisis is due in early 2026.
