In summary
Billions of gallons of sewage have entered San Diego communities through the Tijuana River. Local leaders are speeding up plans to clean up the river and protect public health.
San Diego leaders are trying to speed up solutions to sewage pollution from the Tijuana River, while investigating the scope of the problem.
Community advocates, healthcare professionals and environmental experts with the Tijuana River Coalition on Thursday offered updates on the toxic pollution that plagues south San Diego. And they outlined efforts to fix it, including state legislation, cleanup funding and studies on health and economic impacts.
“As so many folks know, this is one of the longest standing public health issues facing the United States,” said Courtney Baltiyskyy, vice president of public policy and advocacy at the YMCA of San Diego County. “It is a unique issue because it’s on the border between Mexico and the United States and in a place with thriving commerce and extremely unique ecological, natural resources. But we know that the threat to our communities is dire. And it’s worse than ever before.”
Sewage pollution from Mexico enters the Tijuana River and sickens swimmers and surfers, forces beach closures and endangers Navy SEALs training in Coronado. The river also emits airborne toxins including foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide gas, which causes breathing problems and other ailments in neighboring communities. That air pollution has worsened in recent months, with more unsafe air warnings, speakers said.
County officials are getting the word out as soon as air quality declines. In the past, parents got hydrogen sulfide alerts well after their children left for school. Now the county provides much earlier notice, said Stefanie Sekich, a special advisor to San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre.
“They were getting updates at eight o’clock in the morning,” she said. “That’s not sufficient when you’re walking to school. You don’t want to get a text update that your child’s breathing hydrogen sulfide, so our office worked with the county to ensure that… they’re having folks get up at five o’clock in the morning and sending out alerts.”
San Diego County officials have distributed 12,000 air purifiers to households near the Tijuana River, Sekich said. They’re raising funds for more, noting that health officials recommend one in every bedroom, and many families near the Tijuana River live in multi-generational homes.
The county set aside $2.5 million for initial work to fix a pollution “hot spot” on Saturn Boulevard in south San Diego County, where polluted water runs through culverts that aerosolize hydrogen sulfide and other pollutants. Reconfiguring the structure could slow the water flow and keep toxins from becoming airborne. Officials are also requesting at least $25 million from the state for that improvement.
A suite of state legislation aims to tighten air quality standards and free up money to reduce pollution emitted by the river.
State Sen. Steve Padilla and state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, Democrats from San Diego and Encinitas, introduced a bill to revisit standards for hydrogen sulfide gas. It would require the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to develop health-based threshold levels for hydrogen sulfide by January, 2030, which could lower the state standard for safe levels of the noxious gas. The bill passed the state Senate and is awaiting a vote in the Assembly.
Their related bill would require the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health to set standards that protect the health and safety of employees with exposure to cross-border pollution in outdoor jobs, including lifeguards and park rangers who work near the Tijuana River. Some workers report “headaches, fatigue, nausea, and bloody noses after exposure,” Blakespear stated in a Senate committee hearing last month. The bill is awaiting a final vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Chula Vista Democrat, also proposed legislation to expedite spending from California’s 2024 climate bond, Proposition 4. Money from the bond measure is slated to fix the Saturn Boulevard hot spot, to reduce air pollution from the river.
County officials are conducting an economic impact study on how sewage pollution affects local schools and businesses. An earlier survey from 2023 by the county and San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce found that 74% of local businesses are negatively impacted and 50% lost significant revenue, Baltiysky said.
The next study will be more comprehensive, Sekich said: “This is going to go through everything for two years, seeing how many kids missed school? What did it do to school funding? What about property values?”
Health studies are also in the works. Virginia Castellanos, a school nurse at Bayside STEAM Academy, near the Tijuana River estuary, said studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that pollution increases lung inflammation and can worsen asthma symptoms in children, while a Stanford University study showed that air pollution exposure can alter immune function.
A San Diego County epidemiological study will look at how Tijuana River pollution affects residents’ health, by retroactively examining toxic exposure through hair samples, blood samples and other tissues.
Dr. Vi Nguyen, a San Diego pediatrician, has established a network of hundreds of local doctors to diagnose and document pollution-related health problems including ear infections, allergic rhinitis, skin rashes and gastrointestinal problems such as diarrhea. She’s also seeing an uptick in serious illnesses such as kidney disease, and drug-resistant urinary tract infections in teenage girls.
“San Diego will not be left behind, the South Bay cannot be forgotten,” Nguyen said. “My patients – especially the little ones in Imperial Beach, San Ysidro, Nestor and Berry Elementary – they deserve better, and so that’s why I’m here and continue to show up as a community pediatrician. And really the state of California and the rest of our Californians need to.”
