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The Science Behind San Diego’s New Beach Water Quality Test

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby MacKenzie Elmer

Today we’ll unpack the science behind a brand-new technology to measure water quality. San Diego is first in the world to use it, and it’s already sparked controversy.

The more sensitive test shows there’s more poo plaguing San Diego’s southernmost beaches than we could ever tell before — especially in summer when coastal cities like Coronado virtually never failed water quality tests using the old tests. In the case of South Bay, there is an obvious source of human sewage that’s plagued the coastline for decades: Tijuana.

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Will Coronado, Imperial Beach Shorelines Be Closed All Summer? New Testing Reveals Rampant Tijuana Sewage

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joshua Emerson Smith

Coronado’s tony seaside community and working-class Imperial Beach could be headed for a major reckoning with the sewage continuing to spilling over the border from Tijuana.

Beach closures that were once thought of as largely a wintertime occurrence now appear poised to become a year-round phenomena in San Diego’s South Bay.

However, that’s not because the cross-border pollution from Baja California’s overtaxed and crumbling wastewater system has dramatically escalated, according to county officials.

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San Diego Pays a Lot for Abundant Water. Tijuana Pays a Different Price for Water Scarcity.

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Vicente Calderón and MacKenzie Elmer Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Maria Herrera had about a quarter left in her last five-gallon water jug.

On that April afternoon, though, spotty water service returned to the 67-year-old woman’s apartment, before the jug emptied. If it hadn’t, that was all she had left to bathe, do housework or drink.

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Mysterious Sewage Spill Baffles Officials

/in , , /by /Voice of San Diegoby MacKenzie Elmer

Federal officials are investigating why millions of gallons of sewage-laden water isn’t making its way from Tijuana to the international wastewater treatment plant in the U.S. Instead, that untreated wastewater is flowing into San Diego through a border drain, which indicates there’s probably a broken pipe or a clog somewhere in Tijuana.

The runaway flow began Jan. 7 around 1:30 p.m. when almost a million gallons of sewage escaped from Tijuana through Stewart’s Drain, which sits just east of the International Wastewater Treatment plant operated by the International Boundary Water Commission.

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EPA Considers Projects To Fix Cross-Border Pollution Flows

/in , /by /KPBSby Erik Anderson

Federal officials are getting closer to identifying how they plan to control persistent cross-border sewage flows which routinely foul the San Diego ocean.

They talked publicly on Friday about ongoing efforts to fix a persistent problem, sewage coming from Tijuana which fouls a sensitive estuary in the United States and also contaminates the ocean.

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Environment Report: Tijuana and San Diego Share a Sewage Problem But Not a Solution

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby MacKenzie Elmer

Vicente Calderon from Tijuana Press and I spend a lot of time picking our way around the sewage-laden Tijuana River, asking ourselves: How is it still this bad? Our latest story from the cross-border sewage crisis plaguing Tijuana and San Diego illuminated that the current approach to solving the problem is a lot like putting a Band-Aid on the stomach flu. The Band-Aid in this case is $300 million that Congress has charged the Environmental Protection Agency with deciding how to spend. But really, and here’s the flu part of the allegory, a lot of Tijuana’s infrastructure is just old and broken, or was never even built to support the neighborhoods that popped up on its hillsides.

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Mexico Says It Fixed the Tijuana River Sewage Problem. It’s Partly True

/in , , /by /Voice of San Diegoby MacKenzie Elmer and Vicente Calderón

Like a giant garbage disposal, three huge new green pipes sit on Mexico’s side of the border, shredding trash in the Tijuana River that would otherwise jam this critical piece of th­­e city’s wastewater system that caused spills on the United States side.

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Reporter Notebook: Will EPA Fix for Tijuana River Keep Pace with Growth?

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joshua Emerson Smith

Reports of Tijuana sewage leaking over the border into the San Diego region stretch back at least to the 1930s. The fundamental issue hasn’t changed all that much over time. Plumbing still isn’t keeping pace with population growth. Water officials in Baja California have frequently pointed out that sewage collection in Tijuana far exceeds that in many parts of Mexico.

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‘It’s Working’: Boom System Set Up in Tijuana Stops Piles of Trash from Flowing into California

/in , , /by /Fox 5 San Diegoby Salvador Rivera

It’s been raining in the Tijuana-San Diego region since Friday and as it always happens, much of the runoff flows from south of the border through canyons into the U.S. bringing with it tons of trash, debris and plastics.

Only this time, not as much is making its way north thanks to a trash collecting boom system that was set up in Tijuana last week.

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War of Words Heats up Over International Efforts to Clean up Border Sewage

/in , , /by /Border Report (Nexstar Media Group)by Salvador Rivera

Baja California Gov. Jaime Bonilla is involved in a war of words with a California mayor over cleanup efforts along the Tijuana River Valley, which lies between Tijuana and the city of San Diego.

For decades, raw sewage, trash and debris have flowed from south of the border into the U.S.

Most of those materials, especially the raw sewage, end up in the Pacific Ocean, forcing the closure of beaches in cities like Imperial Beach where over the last nine months, beaches have been closed 180 days due to high bacteria levels in the ocean water.

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