Bright and early on Dec. 21, U.S. Rep. Scott Peters visited the Optimist Club of Coronado’s weekly meeting as a guest speaker.
Peters serves California’s 50th Congressional District, which includes the cities of Coronado, San Marcos, Escondido and coastal San Diego.
At the meeting, he touched on the four economies that power this region: military, tourism, technology and the border, specifically focusing on the border sewage pollution.
The Coronado News earlier this year published a five-part series that examined decades of broken promises by U.S. and Mexican officials to end the continual sewage flow from rapidly growing Tijuana. Further, the public health crisis continues to cause widespread illnesses on both sides of the border, including to U.S. Border Patrol Agents and Navy SEALs.
Navy SEALs in on the issue
In a recent letter, Peters, along with other California Representatives and former Navy SEALs urged leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate to include President Biden’s $310 million supplemental budget request to repair the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant (SBIWTP) in an upcoming funding package.
Peters said they worked really hard to get the president to ask for it, and President Biden did.
“We’ve got the whole delegation and a lot of Californians to support it,” Peters said to the Optimists and visitors. “Everybody who’s running for senate can spell Coronado and sewage, which is good. We’ve got, also, three Navy SEALs who are super conservative Republicans to help us as well, because the SEALs who’ve actually trained here, they know what the situation is.”
Peters said his SEAL colleagues will vote for the $310 million, an effort which is important because it shows bipartisan support of the issue.
Executive summary of health effects
The deal would put them on track to get a permanent solution, Peters said, but they are also looking at ways to further efforts in the interim.
Peters said they funded a study by Scripps Institution of Oceanography to research the health effects of the sewage in Imperial Beach.
MaryAnne Pintar, Peters’ chief of staff, said they have also been working with the San Diego Community Foundation. The foundation is compiling all of the studies that have been done over the years, including the Scripps study, to provide an executive summary.
This executive summary is what they are using to explain the health effects to members of congress.
“We can quantify the closed beach days; we’ve got that data. But the health effects data is what we have really been using in our arguments to other members of congress,” Pintar said. “If you’re asking, ‘are we advocating using that information?,’ we absolutely are. In fact, we have this new tool that we’ve got this executive summary of all of the different data that has been very helpful.”
Other points of discussion
In addition to detailing the current situation with the sewage crisis, Peters noted that the 50th Congressional District happens to be the tenth best educated congressional district in the country out of 435.
“We started Qualcomm here, we’re big in telecommunications and this is the third leading biotechnology hub in the country, maybe in the world,” Peters said.
Peters also touched on the housing crisis, noting that “the cost of housing may be the biggest impediment for the continued prosperity of the Golden State and San Diego.”
At the end, audience members raised questions about the California Coastal Commission, migrant crossings at the border and whether or not there will be funding to sustain the SBIWTP once it’s repaired.
Pintar commented on the last point, saying that there is a requirement for maintenance in Minute 328, a binational agreement calling for both nations to address the pollution issue. She said there is also a requirement for operational costs to be funded.
“The focus for us federally, in terms of bringing resources here, is the Coronado sewage issue, which you’ve waited too long for, and I think we’re really making good progress on that,” Peters reiterated.
