A Coronado power trio has spent the past four years working on a documentary regarding the Tijuana sewage crisis, and they are hoping to have it done on time to be considered for the Coronado Island Film Festival in November.
The group includes Brett Davis and Sarah Morga, a married couple who are the founders of IQPodcasts, and Larry Delrose, known as “Mr. Entertainment” for his work with “Coronado’s Talent” and putting on shows at the Coronado Shores.
The documentary is expected to be released as there is a groundswell of support from elected officials to get Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Joe Biden to declare states of emergency over millions of gallons of raw sewage flowing from Tijuana into the Pacific Ocean.
The pleas come after The Coronado News earlier this year published a five-part investigative series about the broken promises of U.S. and Mexican leaders to fix the public health crisis that has caused local residents, U.S. Border Patrol agents and Navy SEALS to become ill and hospitalized.
“The Big Dump”
Their documentary is titled “The Big Dump: Environmental Sewage Crisis Film,” and all three have been producing and writing it.
Morga, Davis and Delrose also all work together at IQPodcasts, where Davis is the host, Morga is the executive producer and Delrose is the managing producer of the show.
While their podcasts cover a variety of subjects, they say the documentary will tackle a century old problem of sewage seeping all the way to the Coronado beaches.
“It’s not acceptable. It’s been going on since 1935,” said Delrose.
Delrose said he doesn’t care about the “why” anymore. Why he got involved, why make a documentary, why this is still going on.
This documentary is not exposing the problem. It’s looking for solutions and really thinking it’s time to turn it over to the people.”
-Larry Delrose.
“This documentary is not exposing the problem. It’s looking for solutions and really thinking it’s time to turn it over to the people,” Delrose said.
Work began in 2019
Morga said she started talking about pursuing an answer to the crisis with a documentary in 2019, and when the pandemic hit, she and Davis found it was the perfect timing to begin filming.
“We have a call to action,” Morga said.
Morga said the effort began when she started noticing people fishing off of a pier four years ago near the border.
She said fishing in dirty water did not seem right to her and that some people living near the border may not understand the effects of the pollution.
“A lot of them don’t even know there’s a sewage crisis, and they live in Chula Vista,” said Morga.
The issue of sewage, as Delrose mentioned, has been going on for nearly a century, and they say they are all tired of nothing being done to fix it.
Davis said that even though the problem has been covered in The Coronado News, the San Diego Union Tribune, KUSI and other news outlets, they are frustrated at the lack of movement being done at attempting to solve this crisis.
“You guys are becoming a real voice. Your stories were really, really good,” Davis said of the coverage by The Coronado News.
Inspiration from “Who Are the Marcuses?”
The three said they realized that something very real could be done with their film after they watched a documentary called “Who Are the Marcuses?” at the Blue Water Film Festival in San Diego a couple months ago.
“Who Are the Marcuses?” follows a woman who gives half a billion dollars to Israel in order to help develop research to alleviate water shortages around the world – and it was successful.
The documentary points to how “sewage is an asset…[They] think it’s fantastic because they turn it into clean water, nutrients and energy! They do all that with it,” Delrose explained.
With this newfound inspiration, Morga, Davis and Delrose realized they too could contribute to a positive outcome with their documentary.
Goal: Find a solution
“Don’t deal with the government. Get a billionaire or get a private enterprise to do it,” Delrose said.
“Our goal is to find a solution, find a way to fix it, because the government’s not fixing it,” said Morga. “Somebody has to.”
They added that this is a nonpartisan effort.
“There’s going to be no Republican, Democrat stuff…We’re not mad at one senator, congressperson, governor, president,” Delrose said.
“Or Mexico,” Morga inserts.
They are hoping that this film will reach the right person. Someone who will be able to lend a hand and finally put a stop to sewage water flowing rampant in the ocean around the border.
“It only takes one person,” said Morga.
