In a video posted on Instagram on March 18, Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre hastily rips a letter in half while standing beside the Tijuana River, watching fetid foam flow past atop the murky waters – the source of an ongoing cross-border sewage pollution crisis.
“This is being aerosolized, it’s going into people’s homes, into schools… You can’t even breathe,” Aguirre tells the camera as she points to the foam.
The letter she tore up, dated March 14, informed Aguirre that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains its decision to not investigate the lower Tijuana River Valley for Superfund designation.
In response, the agency said their decision has not changed, contending that Superfund designation is “not warranted due to ongoing projects and investments that will address the underlying cross-border pollution challenge.”
“While EPA has been involved in some of these proposed actions and plans to continue this engagement alongside our federal, state and local agency partners, the report does not contain new information that would warrant changing EPA’s Superfund-related decision as stated in our Jan. 3, 2025 letter,” Cheree Peterson, acting regional administrator, said in the letter addressed to Aguirre on Friday.
Superfund denied
San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer and local South Bay leaders submitted an initial Superfund designation request, including testimonials from 500 affected residents, to the EPA on Oct. 24.
The EPA concluded that a preliminary assessment to determine if the Tijuana River Valley qualified for Superfund designation was not warranted, pulling data from a 6-year-old study, according to a Jan. 3 letter written by Michael Montgomery, the division director of the EPA’s Superfund and Emergency Management System.
In that letter, Montgomery specifically cited a study by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) – from 2018 – that tested for the level of contaminants in channels of the river basin.
“… None of these contaminants exceeded EPA’s regional screening levels for human health in residential soil and are commonly associated with urban stormwater runoff at these concentrations,” reads the letter.
The Superfund program “is geared towards dealing with hazardous waste, not human waste,” Montgomery told the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Jan. 8.
That same month, Zeldin agreed to review the denial of Superfund designation and consider whether a different judgment should be reached.
Aguirre wrote a letter to Zeldin, then EPA administrator-designate, asking him “to put those words into action.”
Zeldin was sworn in as the EPA’s 17th Administrator on Jan. 29.
EPA will not budge on prior decision
In early March, Aguirre sent a second letter, asking for re-evaluation.
“I am asking you, as the new leader of the EPA, to authorize a new review into the Tijuana River Valley’s eligibility for Superfund status and further EPA action, incorporating the new data from the CDC’s jarring new report into consideration,” Aguirre wrote on March 3.
While Zeldin did not respond to inquiries about the EPA’s final decision to deny Superfund designation, he told The Coronado News the agency would ramp up efforts with agencies on both sides of the border to face the crisis head on.
“Mexico must fully honor its commitment to control their country’s growing pollution and sewage impacting the United States,” Zeldin said. ”The time when excuses, delays, or exceptions are tolerated is over.”
In her letters, Aguirre referenced a Jan. 6 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and County of San Diego, which found that 77% of South Bay residents consider the Tijuana River Valley pollution and ocean sewage a threat to public health in the region.
“Fully, 71% of residents surveyed believe their tap water is unsafe and nearly 50% of households reported a health symptom caused by the sewage crisis, including headaches, nausea, asthma and lung pain. I’m attaching that report to this letter,” added Aguirre.
Peterson addressed both letters and the study in the March 14 letter.
“EPA is keenly aware of the negative impacts that your city has suffered for too long, and please know that our agency is firmly committed to the infrastructure fixes that will provide a lasting solution,” Peterson said.
EPA invited to visit IBWC plant
The IBWC and EPA began daily calls with Mexico in March to get updates on an international collector project following excessive flows entering the U.S. via the Tijuana River due to multiple unforeseen construction issues, according to Dr. Maria-Elena Giner, U.S. commissioner of the IBWC.
In a March 18 letter, congressional leaders invited Zeldin to visit the IBWC’s South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in the Tijuana River Valley.
“I look forward to visiting the border in the near future to view this issue firsthand, meet with elected officials, and ensure permanent solutions are urgently implemented to stop years of Mexican sewage impacting the U.S.” Zeldin said in a statement.
