It’s been more than 550 days since the ocean water at Imperial Beach has been safe for swimmers and surfers.
Between wastewater treatment plant repairs and expansions, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, but city leaders say all hands on deck are needed to make progress.
“The pipelines open towards the ocean and its dark water. So that means it’s not good water. It's sewage,” said Brenda Hernandez, a Tijuana resident who said she often has to travel 45 minutes to find a beach that is not contaminated.
“You smell feces and things like that, and you know it’s sewage so that, to me, it’s really really alarming because it’s so dangerous for humans and people that are fishing, and we’re eating this, and we’re consuming … this is our home,” Hernandez said.
Get San Diego local news, weather forecasts, sports and lifestyle stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC San Diego newsletters.
On Thursday Hernandez went to Imperial Beach and found beaches on this side of the border are also impacted.
“It makes me feel horrible because we can’t enjoy the things that are free in life,” Hernandez said.
She’s not the only one frustrated.
Local
“It’s quite concerning for us as far as our quality of life, our public health, and also our economy,” Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre said.
Two significant sources of pollution are the Tijuana River flow and the Punta Bandera sewage treatment plant, which is six miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Mayor Aguirre.
San Diego County Supervisors are calling on the Mexican government to do their part and replace the Punta Bandera Sewage Treatment Plant with a new one.
“That plant itself is discharging 40 million gallons per day and every time we have a South swell event, which is usually in the summer right now, all of that pollution gets carried up the coast and impacts our beaches,” Aguirre said.
In 2022, the South Bay region received $300 million in federal funding to begin an expansion project to solve the cross-border pollution problem. Now that half of the federal money is going towards repairing the existing plant, Aguirre said it may be years before the expansion of the plant happens.
“Recent assessments from IBWC and USCPA have found that there’s a significant amount of repair that the treatment plant needs to undergo before they even consider starting the proposed and approved expansion,” Aguirre said.
The expansion of the plant will not eliminate the beach closures in the South Bay, according to Aguirre, but it will significantly reduce them.
“We want to make sure that we get all the resources that are necessary so that we can implement this expansion as soon as possible without any delay because at the end of the day, it’s not just Imperial Beach – it’s south San Diego, it’s Chula Vista, it’s National City, it’s Coronado,” Aguirre said.
This week, Board of Supervisors Chair Nora Vargas and Vice Chair Terra Lawson-Remer announced they will bring a State of Emergency declaration forward next week.
