With Sewage Gushing Into Sea, US and Mexican Border Towns Plead for Help

Published on July 19, 2024

IMPERIAL BEACH, California/TIJUANA, Mexico—Each day, millions of gallons of sewage cascade through a canyon and into the Pacific Ocean just south of the U.S.-Mexican border. As any surfer in San Diego knows, summer swells that come from the south will push the toxic brew north. Meanwhile, millions more gallons of treated and untreated sewage trickle down the Tijuana River and into the sea just north of the border. When the wind and currents conspire, the odor of fecal bacteria fouls the otherwise quaint San Diego County town of Imperial Beach, where Mayor Paloma Aguirre calls the discharges “the biggest environmental and public health disaster in the nation that nobody knows of.”...