A beach in southern California has been closed to the public for nearly three years due to toxic sludge in water flowing across the border.
The city of Imperial Beach in San Diego County was forced to shut off access more than 1,000 days ago, thanks to raw sewage and fumes so strong they can be seen in satellite images from space, per SFGATE.
The polluted water is coming from the Tijuana River, where years of sewage treatment failures have resulted in a build up of decaying organic material, stagnant sewage water, and hydrogen sulfide gas.
The years of beach closures have hit morale among Imperial Beach’s 25,000 residents, with ice cream shop owner Jen Crumley telling SFGATE: “No one wants to come here, and it’s really sad.”
Research into the financial impact of the closures by the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce has found that the city is losing half a million dollars a year due to a collapse in tourism.
Crumley told the outlet that local business are relying heavily on local footfall to make ends meet, given the lack of tourists in the area. However, economic pressure also means that businesses are firing local workers, resulting in a knock-on effect throughout the town.
“It’s been empty, so we’re not getting as much business as we used to, and it’s just been rough across the board,” said Crumley.
Residents are also getting sick. Reporting from CalMatters found that Imperial Beach locals are developing migraines, nausea, eye irritation, dizziness, brain fog, and rashes. Children are also suffering from asthma, which gets worse when the pollution is more visible.
Imperial Beach mayor Mitch McKay told The Independent: “Imperial Beach has experienced more than four years of near-continuous beach closures, creating significant economic challenges for local businesses that depend on visitors, tourism, recreation, and outdoor activities. Business owners have consistently reported declines in customer traffic, reduced sales, canceled events, and lost tourism-related revenue…from the City’s perspective, the impacts are visible throughout the community. Vacant storefronts, reduced visitor activity, and ongoing uncertainty have created significant hardship for many small businesses that rely on a healthy coastline to attract customers.”
The City of Imperial Beach told citizens in a press release: “Sewage flows in the Tijuana River remain exceptionally high and untreated wastewater is still being discharged at various locations along the coast originated [sic.] from Mexico.”
In 2023, 500 concurrent days of beach closures resulted in the city government asking the Biden-Harris administration to call a Federal Emergency Declaration for the Tijuana River Valley and the shoreline of Imperial Beach.
The transfer of United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) funds to a boundary and water treatment plant in September, 2024, was the first federal step in alleviating this crisis.
Since then, Mexican and American funds have gone into improving water quality in Tijuana, including building new sewage plants, replacing old pipes, and addressing insufficient treatment capacity concerns. However, these improvements have not led to beach-going this summer.
Mayor McKay told The Independent: ““While it is difficult to characterize the current situation as a success when our community has endured more than 1,650 consecutive days of… pollution and beach closures, we are beginning to see some reduction in sewage flows within the Tijuana River.
“Recent wastewater infrastructure improvements in Mexico, along with10 million gallons per day of added treatment capacity at the IBWC’s South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, have helped reduce the volume of sewage entering the river during dry-weather conditions. Both the United States and Mexico continue to advance major infrastructure projects identified in Treaty Minute 328. Progress on these projects is publicly tracked and reported by the IBWC through its online project portal.”
However, a local advocacy group, Citizens for Coastal Conservancy (C4CC), has criticized the local San Diego government for not doing enough. They have also expressed scepticism over the claims that all of the sewage is Mexico’s responsibility.
In a video posted to Facebook on June 7, C4CC advocates allege that sewage is also coming from a plant operated by the city of San Diego.
The group is planning their own beach clean up day on July 5 to address some of the tangible pollution along the coast.
“The City of Imperial Beach is engaged in continuous advocacy at every level of government, including requests to fund immediate solutions and petitions to the various responsible agencies,” the city said in a statement.
