San Diego County's mayors push Newsom for help with border water-pollution crisis

The Tijuana River sewage emergency has reached the state level once again.

All 18 mayors in San Diego County have sent another letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking for his help to address the ongoing sewage and chemical pollutants flowing into the ocean from the river.

“Trans-boundary sewage flows continue ... across these lands, impacting our people, our water, our beaches, our ocean and our future,” said Sandy Naranjo, vice-chair for the San Diego County Board of Port Commissioners.

Paloma Aguirre, the mayor of Imperial Beach, where beaches have been closed now for 650 consecutive days, said that going to the beach is one of the last free recreational things people can do, and that issue affects people living beyond the coast.

“We have residents here in San Ysidro and Chula Vista being affected by the orders," Aguirre said. You know, and we're concerned that it's affecting their quality of life,” she said.

Leon Benham, Imperial Beach resident and president of the Citizens for Coastal Conservancy, said the smell is overwhelming.

“We want our beaches clean,” Benham said. “We want our river valley, which we used to be so pristine, restored.”

The International Boundary and Water Commission has created an $8 million recovery plan to repair damage the sewage plant suffered during Tropical Storm Hillary. The plant was already vulnerable, which is why Aguirre said repairing that damage is just the tip of the iceberg.  

“It's like putting a Band-Aid on a slashed aorta,” Aguirre said. “It's not going to be enough.”

County mayors are asking Newsom to step in by issuing a state of emergency and allocating federal funds to fix the current damage at the plant, expand its capacity and construct a new treatment plant to manage storm flows.

The goal is for the plant — to meet quality permit standards — could take up to a year, though noticeable progress could come within a month