The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has decided not to investigate the Tijuana River Valley as a potential Superfund site.
“The Superfund program is geared toward dealing with hazardous waste, not human waste,” said Mike Montgomery, the division director for the EPA’s Superfund and Emergency Management Division during the Jan. 8 meeting of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
A Superfund site is a contaminated area designated and remediated by the EPA. The program was established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, but it is colloquially known as “Superfund.”
The decision was unwelcome to leaders and residents who requested the investigation, but San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer said she is not done fighting to determine whether the ongoing Tijuana sewage crisis could pose long-term environmental issues, even after the crumbling infrastructure causing it is fixed.
“Even if the (discharged waste) water is clean, if there are contaminants in the soil and we don’t remediate them, we’re just papering over the problem,” she said. “So I am concerned that the EPA made a decision to reject our petition without even coming to visit the site.”
Last fall, Lawson-Remer requested that the county submit a request to the EPA to investigate the Tijuana River Valley as a potential Superfund site. The Board of Supervisors decided against doing so, with some of its members saying they wanted more time to research the matter.
However, Lawson-Remer still filed her own request, alongside 500 other petitioners – residents and other leaders, such as Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, National City Council Member Marcus Bush, and La Mesa City Council Member Jack Shu.
In a Jan. 3 letter of response to Lawson-Remer’s request, Montgomery said that in 2018 and 2019, the EPA sampled seven transboundary channels in the Tijuana River Basin and did not find contaminants that exceeded the EPA’s regional screening levels for health in residential soil. The agency did find contaminants, but at concentrations that are commonly associated with urban stormwater runoff, he said.
Further, the crumbling infrastructure responsible for the ongoing sewage runoff is currently being repaired. Because of this, Montgomery said, the site does not qualify for a preliminary assessment for Superfund status.
The county will still explore alternate avenues of investigating whether lingering pollutants are in the soil and, if so, whether they pose a threat to public health.
Montgomery suggested that the county work with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
“The human waste has caused incredible, deleterious effects on the economy and people’s health,” Montgomery said at the Jan. 8 meeting. “It’s a horrible situation. The solution here is to prevent transboundary migration of sewage. There is storm water in that sewage, and there are hazardous substances commonly found at low concentrations in storm water everywhere.”
Montgomery said that the Superfund program is not geared toward mitigating stormwater pollution, which he said that the contaminants the EPA found in 2018 and 2019 are associated with.
“That’s why we felt it was really important to engage with the Water Board,” Montgomery said. “They have the authority under the Clean Water Act to address both hazardous substances and human waste.”
Montgomery said that he met with the Water Board as a part of his trip to San Diego, and that the EPA was prepared to work with the board as it moves forward.
Supervisor Jim Desmond, however, had concerns.
“I sit on the Water Board,” he said. “There’s no money at that Water Board. We get beat up every time we try to raise the rates. Locally, we can’t handle or manage (the pollution). The state points the finger at you, and you point the finger at them, and that’s where we’re stuck.”
The Board of Supervisors did not disguise their disappointment during discussion, but its members remained civil and thanked Montgomery for his time.
Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe said that, despite hitting a dead end with the Superfund designation, their time was not wasted: They now had a different path to take, a different agency to which it will appeal. She thanked the local leaders and advocates who have pushed for solutions to the sewage crisis.
“This is a system we have to work through,” she said. “And we won’t stop.”
