I would like to respond with thoughtful comments to the claims made by Brian McNeece and Richard Gersberg concerning my Sept. 9 article in The Coronado News.
‘The Primer on Ocean Sewage,” that I authored in a letter to the editor is still the most accurate depiction of our near-shore ocean currents and how contaminated water moves along our coastline.
The first point is to provide the link to a 1976 article, which was missing from my original article.
This study of the Coronado Littoral counterclockwise currents by Douglas Inman is still very accurate and has never been challenged. It shows ocean currents carry treated sewage effluent from the South Bay Ocean Outfall (SBOO) to the shore and then north to Coronado.
In the 1994 court case, Surfrider vs City of San Diego, which attempted to stop the construction of the SBOO, experts hired by the city and Scripps Institute testified as follows about likely harm to the environment and bad outcomes to near-shore ocean water quality:
“These currents flow onshore at Imperial Beach and then turn north and flow alongshore for 10.6 miles to Coronado. At this point, they turn and flow offshore to the west for almost ten miles and then to the south to complete the circle.”
Expert consultants informed the city that the “potential for onshore transport of the effluent plume was not addressed [in the engineers’ study of the outfall]. The selected diffuser site is located on the inshore side of a current gyre that could bring effluent ashore in this area.”
Doctors Douglas Irman, Pearn P. Niiler, and Scott Jenkins of Scripps found that sewage discharged from the outfall will rise to the surface in significant quantities, impact South Bay beaches in undiluted amounts, and pose threats of contamination and disease.
The second point is the “Ocean Monitoring Program” (OMP) referred to by McNeece and Gersberg is not well respected by local citizens who have been living with beach closures for 1,010 consecutive days. Time and again local citizens have said “the fox is guarding the hen house.”
Why? Because the City of San Diego directly hires these consultants, and it is a direct conflict of interest. There should be an independent third-party testing of the water, and report conclusions should be made directly to the public.
After 20 years, the program still does not have answers to basic questions put forth by the public. These concerns are as follows.
- The SBOO started dumping in 1998, and since then all the kelp beds and tide pools off Imperial Beach have died off, why?
- The monitoring sites are approximately a half mile west of the SBOO and intentionally give a false picture of the impacts of the SBOO. It’s like testing a river upstream of the pollution source.
- The testing of the SBOO effluents should be by the ddPCR test, not the old MPN Test. The DDPCR test is the same test that shuts down our beach. Is this a double standard?
- At the recent presentation by the Monitoring Program, the aerial photo presented to the public was obviously enhanced and “photoshopped.”
- The weekly shoreline water tests show there is a large spike in contamination right off Imperial Beach that is higher than TJ River and higher than the Tijuana Beach… Why? There is only one source which would cause this…that source is the 40 million gallons a day that is dumped by the SBOO directly off Imperial Beach. Why is this data being intentionally suppressed?
Simply put, the Gersberg study’s exact purpose was to compare the difference in ocean conditions between primary treated sewage outputs and secondary treated sewage outputs from the International Boundary and Water Commission’s (IBWC) plant. It was not intended to provide an analysis or statement of coastal currents or flows of tainted sewage along the coast.
The Gersberg data is not relevant to current flows along the beach. It also does not reflect the current amounts of sewage which are present in the environment or coming out of the (Tijuana) River for the last three years.
In closing, most people living in Coronado and Imperial Beach do not recognize the simple fact that the South Bay Ocean Outfall is the major source and cause of ocean pollution (along South Bay beaches). The situation is about to get far worse as the SBOO will go from 25 mgd (million gallons daily) of treated sewage to 120 mgd of treated sewage. This represents a 480% increase in fecal solids and pollution directly to the beach.
This plan to quadruple the dumping of partially treated sewage from Mexico off the shore of Imperial Beach was endorsed by Gavin Newsom and deviates from the plan approved by Congress which appropriated $300 million to fix the problem. The plan approved by Congress, which was agreed to by Mexico, would send all the sewage 10 miles south of Imperial Beach. So local citizens are asking: Why did our California leaders agree to bring 480% more sewage to Imperial Beach from Mexico?
For McNeece and Gersberg to mischaracterize my article as inaccurate and then say “much progress is underway” is not supported by the facts of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) plan cited above. In fact, if you “follow the science” the USMCA Comprehensive Plan will make things far worse.
Editor’s note: Leon Benham and Brian McNeece are members of the International Boundary and Water Commission Citizen’s Forum. Richard Gersberg is a Professor Emeritus at San Diego State University. Benham is president of Citizens for Coastal Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group. This letter has been edited for clarity, style and brevity.
