The 2023 Clean Water Report ranks Imperial Beach, Calif. as one of the most polluted bodies of water in the nation, with 100% of samples collected which fail to meet the state health standard for recreational waters. According to NBC 7 San Diego, the California State Legislature recently passed a resolution urging Congress and President Joe Biden to fix the sewage crisis at the border. The Tijuana River, a heavily polluted river in the city near the Mexican-American border, has been releasing an endless amount of raw sewage from Tijuana into the Pacific Ocean, leaving both Mexico and any waters near it with an environmental and public health crisis.
According to Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, Imperial Beach is hit with about “40 million gallons of sewage every day,” and surfers, lifeguards and locals have noted that the issue has “gotten worse over time,” according to interviews by NBC 7 San Diego.
Since the beach first closed on Dec. 8, 2021, it has been closed for over 1000 days until just recently, when an area of water near the Silver Strand Peninsula just near the Imperial Beach pier opened up on Sept. 23 after meeting the state’s threshold for safety.
The pollution has led to the temporary shutdown of numerous utilities and tourist attractions lining the beaches over the 1000 day closed period, such as surf P.E. classes, and has impacted the economy, as “within a one-mile radius of the closed beaches, prices have been most significantly impacted selling for around 20% less than they would sell if the ocean was not polluted.”
This is an additional issue along with emerging concerns over public health, degrading infrastructure and the repercussions of the damage on the communities in San Diego.
Mostly due to the incompetence of the sewage infrastructure on both sides of the Mexican-American Border, the crisis has enlarged.
However, Tijuana is now making a repair to the biggest sewer main that runs from the Mexican-American border to the center of the city, which requires the closure of a piece of the sewer system. In doing this, the waste will go into U.S. waters. While Mexican and U.S. officials assure the temporary effects of the repairs will help with future illegal spills, coastlines will be heavily contaminated during these repairs and will not be able to stay open to the public.
According to Voice of San Diego, if the sewer main fails, raw sewage will spill back into the river and into the oceans in excessive amounts.
The repairs will take two weeks and begin in mid-October. During the process, every day of those two weeks, 20 million gallons of city sewage will go into the river, which will later flow into the Pacific Ocean right below Imperial Beach. (Voice of San Diego)
The U.S. maintains its own level of cleanliness as best it can through its wastewater treatment plant, the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, funded through the International Boundary and Water Commission of U.S. and Mexico, which cleans more than 25 million gallons of sewage water per day. The Tijuana and U.S. sewage issue has been a large concern since 1934.
The Coronado Times states that other critical repairs are underway for the plant, as construction of two gates on the eight-foot-wide pipe will help carry wastewater from Mexico straight to the wastewater plant mentioned above, costing just under six million dollars.
After several decades of the Tijuana sewage crisis, the SBIWTP may be able to have some control over the wastewater flowing into the U.S. beaches, and looks to significantly lower the bacterial contamination rates at each of the sites.
With both countries leading large scale repairs, Imperial Beach may be able to restore its original environment eventually.
by Sneha Lele