Coronado City Council member John Duncan emphasized the threat of Tijuana sewage to local beaches by challenging Gov. Gavin Newsom to eat seafood caught in local ocean waters.
Duncan’s dare was issued this week during a meeting of local elected officials, who are asking Newsom to declare the beach contamination a public health emergency.
“I know this may sound a little bit silly,” he said, “but this is a challenge that I believe is a fair challenge, to say, ‘Governor Newsom, if you are willing to come to Imperial Beach, throw a fishing line in off this pier, catch a fish and eat it I’ll stop bothering you about a state of emergency in Imperial Beach… But you won’t because it’s polluted and it’s unhealthy,’” said Duncan.
A spokesperson in the Governor’s office said there are plans from the state to coordinate a response for recent letters sent to Newsom this year.
“San Diego communities have dealt with this crisis for far too long,” wrote Deputy Communications Director Alex Stack.
But that takes time and action at the federal level, according to a letter by Newsom in October.
“The Governor helped secure $103 million in federal funding to fix the federal wastewater treatment facility, which will result in needed improvements to address this crisis,” Stack added. “The state has also invested tens of millions of dollars in cleaning up the area, monitoring conditions, supporting public health needs, and more.”
Earlier this year Congress announced additional federal funding to rehabilitate a deteriorated South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Beginning another summer of beach closures for coastal communities, elected officials from San Diego County are once more asking Newsom to support their requests for a state and federal emergency declaration about what they say is an unprecedented public health crisis.
New year, same requests
All San Diego County Mayors wrote to Newson to underscore that declaring an emergency remains dire and also asked to get Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) intervention to help assess the health of local residents amid a decades-long sewage crisis.
This letter comes after a delegation of California congressional representatives asked the CDC in May to examine the health impacts in Imperial Beach, Coronado, and San Diego.
Congress and local leaders alike want scientific expertise intervention to understand the extents of pollution contaminants in water, soil, and air across these communities, but also to find connections to increased gastrointestinal illnesses and other symptoms as reported in the community.
San Diego County officials, community groups and leaders convened during a conference held in Imperial Beach feet away from the brown waves crashing into the pier underneath cloudy skies on June 4.
Throughout the event, speakers expressed their commitment to combat pollution that threatens the economy, environment and public health of their constituents.
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre read an excerpt from the group’s June 4 letter:
“The reprehensible conditions in the Tijuana River Valley fall squarely within the definition of a ‘state of emergency’ under the Emergency Services Act,” Aguirre said.
A state of emergency could help California provide a significant measure of relief to combat the issue, according to the letter that proposed deploying medical staff and a greater workforce to help keep the Tijuana River Valley and Border Fields State Park clean.
“A declaration would provide the Governor with additional, critical tools that could provide a significant measure of relief to the residents of San Diego County and the State’s property and resources,” the letter reads.
The Governor’s office this month maintains prior considerations of any resulting impact that Newsom declaring a state of emergency would have.
According to Legal Affairs Secretary David Sapp, a state proclamation of emergency is not necessary to trigger a federal emergency declaration to support the federal response to this crisis.
“Although the Governor has not proclaimed a state of emergency because it would not actually aid the ongoing response to this crisis, he has taken a host of other actions focused on the real solution to this crisis—pushing the federal government to move urgently to upgrade the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant and related facilities,” wrote Sapp in letter dated Oct. 10 to the California Coastal Commission.
In their June 4 letter, the Mayors of San Diego made an additional request for the governor: ask the CDC to intervene in this matter.
“We visited with the [CDC] and we were informed very clearly that a municipality was unable to make the request for direct intervention,” said Aguirre about the regional lobbying trip to DC in April. “This intervention has to come at the request of our state and therefore of our governor.”
School districts across the region have already petitioned the Biden administration to do something.
Coronado Unified School District Trustee Whitney Antrim hand delivered 448 letters to the Governor’s office in Sacramento last month after the district led a letter writing campaign with student groups increasing community advocacy for action to combat the Tijuana River pollution and environmental crisis.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond on deadline about plans to examine these public health threats in a request from The Coronado News.
To illustrate their motives for concern about exposure to pollution that has resulted in one billion gallons of untreated sewage entering local shorelines and more than 900 consecutive days of beach closures, city mayors reference a paper by San Diego State University’s School of Public Health.
During the conference, Paula Stigler Granados, associate professor in SDSU’s School of Public Health and the paper’s lead author, said the school has plans to roll out a health survey to collect beach users’ self-reported illnesses to track environmental exposures.
But Aguirre questioned why the federal and state governments are not doing that work.
“We shouldn’t have to depend on…students to do what our health agencies are charged and have a duty to do, which is to protect our community’s public health,” she said. “That is precisely why we’re reaching out…to better understand the health impacts and how broad and severe they are.”
A handful of community members approached the group gathered in Portwood Pier Plaza to ask questions and share personal experiences with infections.
In the seconds following his speech, Duncan gave Aguirre a City of Coronado honor coin representing the continued partnership between the neighboring municipalities and their work on this issue.
According to Duncan, there are plans to visit the San Antonio de los Buenos Wastewater Treatment Plant in Mexico this month while it undergoes construction scheduled for completion by September.
“Unfortunately a lot of citizens of this country, visitors to this country do do it for food,” added Duncan about local marine life. “This fish – this ocean – is not clean, and it is not safe.”
