In the early 1900s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a massive jetty from the shore of North Island almost 1.5 miles into the mouth of San Diego Bay.
The Zuniga Shoals Jetty Project was designed to create a deepwater port for vessels to enter and exit. But, it took over a decade to complete, cost far more than anticipated and, according to the San Diego History Center, was an epic failure: “…the rock structure did not solve the harbor’s problems.”
The jetty is now submerged and marked by lights and a sound signal at the seaward end, alerting of potential dangers, according to a U.S. Coast Survey report.
More than one century later, Coronado resident George Mullen, principal of StudioRevolution and co-founder of Sunbreak Ranch, began touting another huge jetty – convinced that a rock seawall along the coast could block Tijuana’s sewage from reaching San Diego County beaches.
Mullen’s idea, which he touts online, would extend from just north of the Tijuana River mouth 2.7 miles into the Pacific, blocking northbound currents that carry human and industrial wastes north along the shoreline.
In fact, Mullen contends the Zuniga Jetty proves that you can affect the movement of sewage with breakwaters and jetties. The point is to get that sewage into deep water, he said, where it’s diluted and then it becomes less toxic
“Having surfed a lot and been sick from sewage, I want clean water, clean air for everybody,” he added.
Mullen, who claims no credentials in engineering, oceanography or construction, has put forth three breakwater options in his so-called “TJ Dilution Solution.” The most radical would cut open a second entrance to San Diego Bay through the Silver Strand, an idea he has advocated previously for national security reasons.
When asked specific questions about the jetty proposal, Mullen referred a reporter to his website or suggested a government study could supply answers. For example, he based cost estimates and material on projects around the world such as breakwaters in Spain, Italy, Japan and France.
“The new wave-dissipating Xbloc technology used at the recent Calais Port expansion may prove to be the perfect fit for our project,” he writes on the website.
Mullen said the Army Corps of Engineers could sort out whether his proposal is viable, actual cost and maintenance, and potential environmental impacts.
“Whether you do one or three jetties it’s probably going to be beneficial to coastal erosion,” said Mullen. “But then again the Army Corps of Engineers, they’re the experts on that, I’m not.”
However, the corps said it has no interest. The California Coastal Commission declined comment, as did the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, a key agency in dealing with the Mexican wastewater issue.
In fact, The Coronado News found no government officials – or experts in relevant fields – who supported the notion of a sewage-diverting jetty.
Falk Feddersen, a professor of physical oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, heavily criticized Mullen’s breakwaters.
After reeling off a list of flaws and devastating consequences, Fedderson emphasized there’s so many things that are wrong and inconsistent.
“It’s bonkers,” he said.
Drawing from history
Mullen, 60, grew up in La Mesa and now lives in Coronado, where he describes himself as an artist and writer. In 2023 he authored the TJ Dilution Solution.
More than three years after Mullen wrote about his proposal in an op-ed, he continues describing it as the most viable solution — even if it’s gained no traction.
“For some reason by nature I’m a problem solver,” said Mullen. “I’m involved in a lot of big issues in San Diego trying to solve pretty large problems cause no one’s doing it.”
Mullen said he spent a lot of time in the Middle East as a young man doing archaeological work where a man-made harbor was built in the ancient Roman city of Caesarea Maritima.
“It dawned on me one day,” he said. “…‘Why couldn’t we do a breakwater, a jetty, just like Romans built breakwaters into the ocean of the Mediterranean to build this man-made harbor?’”
An ‘epiphany’ of jetties
Mullen’s painting, “The Hands of God – the First Six Days,” (1998) alluding to the biblical creation story, is one of many art works decorating the walls of his second-story studio at the southern end of Orange Avenue.
Overlooking the island and San Diego Bay at a distance, Mullen said his days are a combination of painting, writing and work on what he calls civic-minded solutions.
Among those solutions is a proposal, around for years, calling for a second opening to San Diego Bay because Mullen said the single channel currently is a big national security if a ship is sunk.
“If we do a second bay opening and there’s a sewage problem as the tides go, that means sewage could back into the bay when the tides go down,” he said.
And so his idea for jetties intend to address concerns of Tijuana sewage in San Diego Bay in that scenario.
“At some point, it was an epiphany, and I thought, ‘I know how we can do this,’” he said. “…I walked down to the Tijuana River opening and really started really looking at it and going ‘If you do a jetty here, a breakwater, we can actually accomplish what we’re trying to do.’”
From there it took Mullen approximately one year to study and write the TJ Dilution Solution.
“Really it’s the second bay opening is where it all started and probably my work on that ancient Roman harbor in the Eastern Mediterranean because I have an understanding of what could be accomplished in the ocean,” he said.
Mullen’s first option calls for a 2.7-mile-long jetty from land just north of the Tijuana River, jutting southwest. It would be about 10 times as long as the Imperial Beach pier (1,491 feet), built at a very low profile.
“There’ll probably still be some (sewage) coming in, but it’ll be minimal,” he said about flows reaching U.S. beaches.
A second breakwater option Mullen proposes is building a 1.5-mile rock jetty and a 3.5-mile extension rubber boom, arched like a crescent moon, with a 20 foot skirt.
“Because the sewage is more buoyant it stays near the top, so it just keeps naturally floating outward and then diluting over time,” he contends.
A third option features a rock jetty and extension boom in conjunction with a second opening to San Diego Bay.
Proposal lacks interest
Mullen said he wants elected representatives to request a study by the Army Corps of Engineers.
“We’ve put it out to them, but we don’t get much interest,” he acknowledged.
According to Mullen, the Option A jetty could be built in four years at a cost of approximately $200 million. He estimated Option C, with a second bay opening, likely would be $1 billion. He offered no further explanation on key cost factors.
The project’s website references projected cost and timeline for the jetty pulling from completed projects such as the Algeciras Isla Verde detached breakwater and the Faw Breakwater.
“Cutting a second channel down to South Bay is not probably that problematic,” he said. “But the problem is that for the Silver Strand, the Highway 75, you’d have to build a tunnel.”
He said the U.S. Navy and Department of War should have a big interest in his solution.
Asked if they’ve expressed it, Mullen said not to him directly “but there’s no question they have an interest.”
Mullen, who uses the first-person plural in describing his proposal, said he has support from an endorsement team listed on his website, where over two dozen backers are identified.
On the list is Frank Urtasun, a Port of San Diego Board commissioner, who told The Coronado News he is not familiar with Mullen’s idea.
Urtasun said he supports a proposed second entrance to the bay, conditioned on resolving the sewage problem and having the federal government lead in whatever solution is pursued.
“I am not a Army Corps of Engineer professional to know if this Tijuana dilution project is the solution that we need,” said Urtasun. “And so, no, I can’t endorse that. I don’t know enough about it. I’ll leave it to the professionals to determine what’s the best way to solve the Tijuana sewage problem.”
Charles S. Dwyer, chief of the Navigation Branch with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District, confirmed his office does not plan to do an assessment.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District is not currently studying the proposal referred to as the ‘TJ Dilution Solution,’ and we have no current plans to initiate a study of that concept,” said Dwyer in a statement. “Any future USACE involvement would depend on applicable authorities, a non-federal sponsor and funding.”
Environmental impacts
Mullen said his TJ DIlution Solution is purely about stopping sewage.
“Ideally, I wouldn’t want any jetty, but there is no other viable way to stop that sewage from pouring north,” said Mullen.
In the wintertime, sand has the tendency to move to the south, and in the summertime, it has a tendency to move to the north, explains Feddersen.
According to Feddersen, the Zuniga Jetty was built to impede sand from entering the channel of San Diego Bay, allowing ships in and out.
“It’s totally fallen apart,” he said. “It’s not really doing anything.”
Feddersen, whose research includes coastal transport of pollution at the San Diego-Tijuana border region, said a jetty in Imperial Beach “could work, but then there’s all kinds of side effects, and then, there’s the cost.”
Feddersen called Mullen’s website misleading, pointing out it includes research by Scripps in a section underneath the endorsement section.
“It makes it look like we’re part of this where we’re not,” he said.
Fedderson noted that a jetty like Mullen’s looks at examples in the Mediterranean Sea, which does not have big, powerful waves like those in San Diego, especially in the wintertime.
He estimates the 2.7-mile jetty may actually cost $2.3 billion based on rock volume using Mullen’s depths and lengths.
“The cost would be crazy,” he added, chuckling. He noted one project Mullen references online lacks a cost estimate.
Feddersen added that any project the Army Corps of Engineers does, local partners must cover half the price. “What local partner is gonna come up with a billion dollars?”
With the way sand transports, Feddersen said, the jetty would cause sand to pile up – closing the mouth of the Tijuana River and possibly causing an estuary to pop on the north side of the jetty.
Feddersen estimates it would take one decade of multiple seasons of summer and winter for beaches to lose sand and by that time sewage would eventually make its way around the jetty.
Feddersen said Mullen proposes the rock jetty at a California designated Tijuana River Mouth Marine Protected Area, a safe habitat for sea creatures that would require approval by the California Coastal Commission.
Feddersen said the jetty would basically decimate all the things that live inside the Tijuana River estuary.
Feddersen said Mullen’s second breakwater option is even crazier, explaining that a boom would not be effective in containing sewage as it does oil – and could easily break off then drift around in the ocean.
Regarding a second bay opening, Feddersen said it would be bad environmentally for the habitat that exists further away from oceanic water in the bay where water is much warmer and saltier.
“If you just magically built that thing, would it reduce the amount of pollution in Imperial Beach and Silver Strand… I think the answer is yes, with questions as to how much. … But … you would basically erode the entire region,” he said.
Concerned residents
Imperial Beach resident Leon Benham, with the Citizens for Coastal Conservancy, said the jetty proposal is not practical and would not solve the pollution problem.
Like Fedderson, Benham contended that a jetty north of the Tijuana River would lead to sand starvation within 10 years which could lead to the houses in Imperial Beach being on the water’s edge.
According to Benham, the Zuniga jetty was meant to be a barrier to sand transportation that was filling San Diego Bay and the breakwater wound up blocking deposits that form Coronado beaches.
“Coronado would lose its beaches too,” Benham said.
According to Coronado City Council member Amy Steward, a solution should protect public health without creating new, potentially long-lasting problems for beaches, coastal communities and ocean.
“Moving sewage farther offshore does not remove pathogens or other contaminants; it changes where they disperse,” said Steward. “We need to prioritize capturing and treating sewage before it reaches the ocean, with reliable infrastructure and enforceable water-quality standards.”
