San Diego’s battle against hepatitis A has focused new attention on a very old, very San Diego problem: feces. It’s a battle the region has repeatedly lost. Excrement from the canyons in Tijuana and from our own toilets and streets has bedeviled the region since western civilization took up roots here. Things had been looking up. Sewage spills are down ten-fold from 20 years ago. Litigious environmental lawyers who once haunted the city had moved on.