For the last seven years, Mitch McKay and his wife have walked the south end of the boca rio – the mouth of the Tijuana River, where it meets the Pacific Ocean. One day, his wife had an open blister on her foot.
She began developing excruciating headaches that extended down her spine, said McKay, an Imperial Beach City Councilmember.
“I rushed her to the hospital,” McKay said. “They determined that she had contracted spinal meningitis from contact with the water.”
She was in the hospital for twelve days.
McKay told his story during a June 25 meeting of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, during which the board approved a plan led by Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer to track the health impacts of the sewage on South Bay residents.
More than 25 people spoke during public comment, mostly in support of the plan, with detractors questioning whether the initiative would be yet another government study that would change nothing. The county also received 37 electronic comments, 36 in favor of the program, which will create a task force to quantify the sewage’s impact.
Meanwhile, Representative Scott Peters filed a series of amendments to next year’s federal budget aimed at securing more money for operations, maintenance, and staff salaries for the International Boundary and Water Commission, which oversees the crumbling infrastructure that, in part, causes millions of gallons of untreated sewage to flow into the Pacific Ocean daily.
The amendments would increase IBWC salaries by $8 million and operations and maintenance by $10 million. The current proposed 2025 budget for the IBWC is $168.5 million for salaries and $168.5 million for operations and maintenance.
The IBWC oversees other infrastructure, not just those related to the Tijuana sewage crisis, but a “substantial amount” of the increased operations and maintenance funding is expected to be used for the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, according to a statement from Peters’ office.
That treatment plant processes sewage from Mexico, and it is in need of deferred maintenance and an expansion.
“In March, the San Diego delegation secured a historic funding increase to fix the broken SBIWTP, but I was clear then that it was not the end of the road in our fight to solve this problem,” Peters said in a statement. “While that funding is enough to get contracts signed, construction started, and keep work on schedule, we know that more will be needed over the years to finish the job.”
Rep. Peters also filed an additional amendment, which would allow federal agencies, as well as local and state entities, to provide additional funds for the SBIWTP. Language permitting this was passed in this year’s spending bill, but it must be approved annually.
Peters also introduced an amendment to the FY 25 Homeland Security funding bill to recognize the importance hazard pay for Customs and Border Protection officers working in contaminated waters.
Lawson-Remer said she hopes additional data on the health impacts of the sewage, both to beach goers and those nearby, will open avenues for more funding to address the issue.
“There is a hidden risk (to the sewage) that needs to be addressed,” Lawson-Remer said at the Board of County Supervisors meeting. “There is a growing body of research indicating the possibility that airborne contamination could also be making people sick beyond the beach.”
