Dispatch from ‘the stinkiest beach in California

BY WENDY FRY | CalMatters

Good morning, Inequality Insights readers.  I’m CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry.

Tuesday was one of those perfect Southern California summer days. While the beaches near La Jolla and Del Mar were packed, the coastline in San Diego’s South County was nearly empty.

That’s because more than 100 billion gallons of raw sewage had washed up from Mexico’s Tijuana River and into the Pacific Ocean during the past five years. The untreated sewage regularly fouls and shutters the shoreline of Imperial Beach, a small coastal town of about 26,000 residents. The smell can be nauseating.

“Imagine opening a manhole cover and just swan-diving in, and that’s what hanging out on the beach is like now,” Imperial Beach resident Wilson Howard told me. I was there shooting videos and interviewing people for a piece I’m putting together for our PBS SoCal partnership called SoCalMatters.

“(The smell) wakes you up in the night. That’s how strong it is,” said Cara Knapp, who lives on the oceanfront Seacoast Drive with the beach as her backyard.

Signs around town read “Stop the Stink” in Imperial Beach and surrounding South Bay neighborhoods. (Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters) 

As you can imagine, Knapp and other residents aren’t too happy about the wastewater surges, which have been washing ashore for decades. Once a world-class surfing destination, I.B.’s got a new title these days.

“They call us ‘the stinkiest beach.’ Who wants to buy a home – a million dollars and up – and be considered ‘the stinkiest beach in the United States?’” said Knapp.

But what’s all this got to do with inequality, you might be wondering?

A lot, says Fay Crevoshay, the communications and policy director for WILDCOAST, an international nonprofit focused on the conservation of coastal and marine ecosystems.

Much of the raw sewage originates in very poor colonias or neighborhoods in Tijuana where people – driven by poverty and a lack of shelter – use garage doors, tires, and other discarded materials to build makeshift shacks and structures that are not connected to any public infrastructure. Their sewage flows directly into a canal that washes into the United States, she said. When it rains, trash and sewage wash through the Tijuana River and into the working-class communities of Southern California’s South Bay.

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“I like how in the U.S. they describe these communities as ‘underserved.’ In Mexico, it’s ‘No served.’ No service. Nothing service,” described Crevoshay.

I.B. locals are worried about more than unpleasant odors. Researchers say the toxins in the water pose severe threats to the public’s health, which is why the beaches in Imperial Beach are often closed.

State Senator Steve Padilla, a Democrat from the nearby city of Chula Vista, and Assemblymember David Alvarez, whose district is in South County, want California to support a resolution that would get the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention involved. Gov. Gavin Newsom has declined to declare a state of emergency and won’t explain why, according to Voice of San Diego.

“They just need to show people that they care because right now, with the exception David Alvarez, our state assemblymember, and Steve Padilla, our state senator, we feel pretty abandoned by our state elected officials on this issue and by our state agencies as well,” said Serge Dedina, the executive director of WILDCOAST and former mayor of I.B.

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