Pollution is ravaging the environment in Imperial Beach, community feels its effects
Katerina Portela
April 19, 2023
Story highlights
- Unregulated dumping along the Tijuana River has been releasing sewage and industrial waste into the waters around Imperial Beach for the past several years, according to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board.
- As a result, the County Board of Supervisors reports that the beach has been closed for nearly all of the past two years.
- Not only has this led to beach closures, but it has raised health concerns as more people are becoming sick from airborne and waterborne illness. Now, residents say they worry for their health and are losing community spaces that once existed by the beach.
SAN DIEGO – Jennifer Sweeney still remembers a time when seals lined the shores of Imperial Beach.
“I would walk at the end of the pier with my dad and we would see seals, barking at us, playing with the fishing rods because they’re babies,” Sweeney says. “But now there’s no seals, no animals.”
That was when Sweeney was a child, growing up and going to school only a few minutes from Imperial Beach’s coastline. Today, the 25-year-old looks to the water and sees only a shadow of what the beach once was.
“I used to see people catch fish all the time, like little rock fish that hang out the bottom of the pier. You could eat them,” Sweeney said.
“Now no one’s catching anything (in Imperial Beach). You can’t fish there. And if you catch something, there’s no way you can eat that. There’s no cleaning it.”
-Jennifer Sweeney, Imperial Beach resident
The water, she said, was clear with colorful fish darting about swimmers. Along with the sounds of seals barking and fishermen chattering along the pier, Imperial Beach was once a noisy and vibrant community gathering place. Now, Imperial Beach is quiet. No seals, no fishermen, and certainly no swimmers.
The issue isn’t the people. It’s the water— contaminated with sewage and industrial chemicals that make the water toxic to touch and to breathe. Sweeney’s story of a rapidly deteriorating environment is not just a story; research has shown that numerous dangerous bacteria have been detected in the waters around Imperial Beach, which may explain animals being driven away just as swimmers have been.
Imperial Beach is less than bustling on a Saturday afternoon in March. Local birds peruse the water while searching for fish. (Photo by Katerina Portela)
A 2022 study published by Scripps Institution of Oceanography revealed that a strain of bacteria called norovirus, which can cause illness and adverse effects on the body, is likely rampant around Imperial Beach and can remain undetected in city testing.
Despite the presence of bacteria and harmful pollutants around Imperial Beach, the urgency of the situation went long unaddressed by state and federal government, despite efforts from citizens and past mayors. The current mayor of the city of Imperial Beach, Paloma Aguirre, reflects on the issues that local officials face when attempting to tackle the pollution that is plaguing their community.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Mayor Aguirre. “I’ve gone through the gamut of officials not wanting to acknowledge that there’s an issue to now acknowledging that there is one, but there’s not enough resources and funding.”
The root of the pollution is a cross border issue born from neglect and lack of regulations
Phillip Musegaas is the executive director and Waterkeeper of San Diego Coastkeeper, a San Diego non-profit that advocates for clean water and environmental justice. He says that the pollution in Imperial Beach comes from two main sources: unregulated sewage infrastructure in Mexico and an American treatment plant that has fallen into disrepair.
At one point, Musegaas says that Tijuana had a sewage pipeline that would lead to a treatment plant in South Bay or Mexico. However, years ago, those pipes broke down, and the treatment plant in South Bay fell into disrepair after years without maintenance. Since then, he says, no effort has been made to repair them.
“That caused a lot of untreated sewage to either be discharged directly in the ocean or pumped to the broken South Bay sewage treatment plant, not really properly treated and then discharged to the ocean. So at this point, it’s essentially an open sewer,” Musegaas said.
The Imperial Beach pier, a formerly common hang out spot and fishing point, stands relatively empty. (Photo by Katerina Portela)
“At this point, it’s essentially an open sewer.”
-Phillip Musegaas, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper
Fisherman Andre Millan throws his fishing line over the edge of Imperial Beach Pier. (Photo by Katerina Portela)
In a report by the San Diego Coastal Commission, “sewer system deterioration and pump station mechanical failures” have resulted in an average of 10 million gallons of sewage, or about 8,300 gallons per minute, being dumped from the Tijuana Metropolitan area into the Tijuana River. For some, this is an unfathomable amount of sewage.
A new study from researchers in the School of Public Health at study from San Diego State University found that the waters in the Tijuana River, which funnels into the Tijuana River Estuary and Imperial Beach, had “significantly elevated levels” of antibiotic resistant microbes, including E. Coli, Legionella, Salmonella enterica, Streptococcus pnuemoniae, and parasites.
The lead author of this study, Paula Stigler Granados, associate professor and Division Head for Environmental Health in the School of Public Health at SDSU, explains that the microbes found in the water are an even greater concern as they affect the air and soil.
“Basically, all the bubbles bursting from the waves that are being generated along the beach line, or just the runoff that’s coming at a fast speed, creates a gas that pops into the air. Then if it’s a good, nice, windy day and the meteorological conditions are right, the weather conditions are right, it will pick up those particles and carry them,” Stigler Granados said. “That’s the potential for chemicals, for bacteria, for viruses, parasites. Anything that’s light enough or able to be carried into the atmosphere can be, and then that can be deposited further away.”
“If this were a trickle of pollution, it wouldn’t be as concerning, but it’s billions of gallons on a regular basis. You could see the plume of pollution. It’s not invisible.”
-Paula Stigler Granados, associate professor and Division Head for Environmental Health in the School of Public Health at SDSU
A surfer bypasses sewage advisory signs to look for a wave on a clear day in Imperial Beach. (Photo by Katerina Portela)
Dangerous pathogens are exposed to the community and the local environment daily, and beyond the obvious health risks and environmental consequences, the impact of this bacteria reaches to the social environment of Imperial Beach as well.
“The public beach at IB has been closed for over two years, every single day. So I think right now it’s almost over 800 days and counting,” Musegaas said. “It’s a beautiful beach. It should be a public resource for the community that they can all use and enjoy safely. And for a long time now, it’s been virtually closed off to their use.”
Mayor Aguirre worries about the long-term health impacts if this issue continues as local health clinics have already started to see changes.
“In the beginning it was like, well, just stay out of the water, right? And, oh, isn’t that easy to dismiss something like that, coming into contact with the water. One of the major reasons why many of us moved to Imperial Beach was to be able to bathe and recreate. So now that is been taken away from us,” Aguirre said. “Now, we have anecdotal reports that people are becoming ill without even coming into contact with contaminated water. We have seen an uptake in illnesses at our local health clinic. So that’s a major concern.”
Imperial Beach resident and fisherman Jorge Arrollo looks over the water as he casts his line. (Photo by Katerina Portela)
On Imperial Beach Pier, fishermen continue to be a fixture. Jorge Arrollo walks up the pier on his days off from work to cast his line and continue a tradition that he grew up with: fishing.
“My father was a fisherman,” Arrollo said. “I’ve been fishing for 40 years.”
He moved to Imperial Beach from Mexico 20 years ago, and says that he’s seen major changes in that time.
“The fish are leaving. There’s just not as much as there used to be. And you can’t eat the fish you catch. It’s all contaminated,” Arrollo said.
Lines of fishing poles stand unattended as fishermen wait for a catch. (Photo by Katerina Portela)
David Zepeda, a longtime Imperial Beach resident, has seen the impacts on younger generations firsthand.
“My high school class, we had a surf PE class because our high school was so close to the beach. For a PE elective, you can take this class where in the morning, at four, six in the morning, you go out with this teacher, and you’d all go out surfing at the beach. He would give lessons on how to paddle, all that stuff. I really wanted to take that class, but I didn’t get to because the teacher had gotten sick, I think, 20 times in the span of, like, two semesters,” Zepeda said.
Now, he sees his younger brothers living without the beach in their lives.
“At the same time, I kind of grew up in that struggle of people really wanting to swim, people really wanting to surf. I grew up going in that water all my life, and now that my little brothers and my siblings can’t, it’s definitely really sad and heartbreaking,” he said.
On a local and federal level, gradual steps are being taken in efforts to reduce the pollution.
Mayor Aguirre says her “first and foremost immediate goal” was to get funding to repair the neglected South Bay treatment plant. Aguirre and other local politicians led a bipartisan delegation to Washington, D.C. and advocated strongly for a goal of $310 million for the repairs. Last March, Congress negotiated $156 million to go towards the plant. While it wasn’t the original amount hoped for, Aguirre calls it progress.
She aims to push for more attention on the beach, and for a state of emergency declaration on the issue from the president.
Until then, many residents continue to hope for change.
“Yeah, I hope they fix it soon,” said Resident Jorge Arrollo. “It’s bad, you know? It’s uncomfortable. People talk and say, Oh, Imperial Beach. I wouldn’t fish there, it’s dirty… I wish it wasn’t this way.”