The Imperial Beach City Council hosted a workshop on Wednesday evening to educate the community about the ongoing bi-national sewage crisis.
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre and City Council members from each district, except absent Mayor Pro Tempore Matthew Leyba-González from District 4, attentively listened to community members voicing exasperated concerns and posed questions concluding presentation updates from four related governmental entities with critical roles in the Tijuana River sewage crisis.
Aguirre reminded attendees of the educational workshop objective at the beginning of the meeting, and she also told them she was appealing to state and federal officials for more funding to fix the decades-long problem.
“We all have frustration, we have anger, we’re tired of the water quality.”
-Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre.
“We all have frustration, we have anger, we’re tired of the water quality,” she said. “But today we have the experts in the room that will be able to share with us their knowledge, their expertise, the latest on the issue so that the new city council can have a better understanding of what’s needed and how to move forward.”
“Frustrated beyond belief”
Five community members shared concerns during public comment that potential solutions would simply not solve the current issue and urged the board to take more responsibility within the scope of the city’s open spaces.
One public comment came from Baron Partlow of Imperial Beach who leads a group called Stop the Poop. He wore a hat mirroring San Diego Padres colors that he said represented the brown colored waves.
“I’m frustrated beyond belief,” said Partlow, addressing the board. “I can’t even take my grandson to the beach and teach him everything I’ve learned about the ocean.”
Other attendees included former Imperial Beach Mayor Brian Bilbray and resident Leon Benham.
Bilbray considers that people have started accepting this crisis as a norm.
“This problem is still going to be here,” he said about what the issue poses for future generations.
“Wake up call”
Bilbray said The Coronado News’ recent five part investigation series serves as a “wake-up call” for Coronado to also realize the worsening issue “is not normal,” he said.
That series examined the financial threats to the economies of Imperial Beach and Coronado because of sewage-related beach closures and the public health crisis that has exposed beachgoers, U.S. Border Patrol agents and Navy SEALS to a myriad of diseases from the fecal-exposed Pacific Ocean.
Benham shared a sheet to fellow attendees about a Citizens for Coastal Conservancy list of questions to the government agencies in attendance after his public comment regarding the nonprofit’s letter to the Environmental Protection Agency about a “low” cost tertiary treatment system to solve the “sludge problem” that went unnoticed, he said.
“Why should we settle for any pollution when there are technologies right now that can solve it? It’s just a question of money,” he said. “So it costs us a billion and a half. Is that worth our beaches being clean?”
Agency presentations
Area Operations Manager Morgan Rogers presented on behalf of the International Boundary and Water Commission San Diego Field Office providing details about the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, which on average treats 25 million gallons of raw sewage daily from Tijuana.
He said the agency’s other priorities include dealing with transboundary flows at canyon collectors and the Tijuana River, lawsuit settlement agreements, and communications with Mexico.
One attendee interrupted Aguirre’s question to Rogers’ presentation regarding rainfall causing treatment plant excess flow by sharing aloud that several pipelines are “down right now” and urging officials to “tell the truth,” leading himself to be immediately escorted out.
Regarding the design for the Punta Bandera treatment plant in Tijuana, Rogers said officials expect Mexico to begin work this summer.
Doug Liden from the EPA presented updates on the U.S. – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA) Tijuana Projects that included short-term projects through 2027 that will cost an estimated $474 million.
He said long-term projects would cost an estimated total of $327 million, including $250 million in additional funding needed from the United States.
Liden revisited Benham’s comment regarding collection ponds as part of the original design in the 1990s to help correct the problem, but they were not followed through due to concerns of local sludge, he said.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography presentation included two professors discussing the science of coastal transport of pollution at the San Diego-Tijuana border region.
Falk Feddersen explained modeling of ocean untreated wastewater transport and human illness in the US/Mexico Border region due to Norovirus causing beach closures and future plans on a forecast model of human illness risk for beach swimmers.
Meanwhile, Kimberly Prather shared a recent report of bacterial and chemical evidence of coastal water pollution from the Tijuana River in sea spray aerosol, which found that 76% of the bacteria in Imperial Beach air is linked to sewage in the Tijuana River.
103 bacterial exceedance advisories
The County of San Diego Department of Environmental Health & Quality presented on the molecular method called digital droplet polymerase chain reaction, or ddPCR, which counts the enterococcus DNA fragments present in the water samples allowing for beach water quality data and implementation of a three-tiered action including advisories, warnings, or closures on beaches.
There have been at least 103 advisories of bacterial exceedance issued this year.
Imperial Beach resident and Council Member Mitchell D. McKay considers that work to mitigate and restore the Tijuana River Valley has been “woefully ignored” by state officials since 1965 and most recently by Gov. Gavin Newsom, he said.
“The South Bay residents are left holding the bag.”
-Imperial Beach Council Member Mitch McKay.
“The South Bay residents are left holding the bag,” said McKay in a written statement regarding the current status of the water quality Issues in Imperial Beach.
Community members, like Partlow, consider that not much change will result from this workshop.
In terms of next steps, McKay believes Aguirre will lead the council in reaching out to both state and federal officials to address the issue of lack of funding
“It’s more like 1.2 billion worth of infrastructure work that needs to happen,” he said.
Moving forward, Aguirre plans to pursue the idea of a community forum with U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas and a follow-up extended presentation by Prather at the first or the second meeting in April, she said.
Aguirre said she hopes to get additional state and federal funding.
Aguirre anticipates the community forum about congressional dynamics with Vargas to happen sometime after the Congressional recess in May.
