A $5 million cleanup project in the Tijuana River Valley will begin in early 2024, with a completion date before the end of March, officials said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 in favor of dredging drainage channels and building a basin for sediment and trash control in the Smuggler’s Gulch and Pilot channels.
San Diego County will spend $5 million to expand removal of sewage and trash from Mexico that accumulates in the Tijuana River Valley.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan that involves building a sediment- and trash-control basin and dredging the drainage channels, known as Smuggler’s Gulch and Pilot Channel, that often build up with debris after storms.
In the endless urban sprawl of Southern California, the Tijuana River Valley looks like a serene break of green before the sprawl resumes on the other side of the border.
But the seemingly bucolic area is where representatives from the California Coastal Commission met on Wednesday to see first hand how sewage in the river has made people in adjacent communities sick and affected state lands.
On an evening in early September, Kylie Carrasco of Nestor said the rotten eggs odor in her south San Diego neighborhood near where sewage pollution spills over from Tijuana became so strong that she found herself in her front yard clutching a hand-held gas monitor she bought on Amazon.
Most of the fish that Marco Valdez catches at the mouth of the Sweetwater River in the South Bay he throws back. He says that in his community, talk of water contamination circulates on the regular – and ever more often.
“You hear this in the news all the time, Pa’,” Valdez told an inewsource reporter as he reeled in his line.
The City of Imperial Beach has joined a list of cities in San Diego County that are requesting assistance from the White House with sewage leaks from Tijuana.
The mayor of Imperial Beach said the recent closures from the sewage spills present a public health and economic crisis. Businesses and beach visitors have also expressed their frustration.
As temperatures reached the 80s and people flocked to the shore for beach cleanups on Earth Day last month, an order to stay out of the water dampened what could have been a very busy beach weekend after months of wet weather in Long Beach.
The beach closure was prompted by the second sewage spill of 2023 that resulted in 250,000 gallons of raw sewage entering the Los Angeles River near Downey and making its way toward Long Beach where the river’s mouth dumps its contents into the ocean.
A malfunction at a wastewater pumping station spilled 500,000 gallons of raw sewage into San Diego Bay, authorities said.
More than six miles of shoreline were closed or posted with warning signs after the spill Monday afternoon sent untreated wastewater flowing out of manholes and into storm drains downtown and in the Midway area instead of going to a treatment plant, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Wednesday.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
