The earliest complaints about sewage from Tijuana reaching the beaches of what is now Imperial Beach were filed in 1933. Tijuana's population at that time was about 14,000 people. Today it is 2.3 million. The sewage is still coming. The beaches are still closed. And if you're a surfer or a swimmer in Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, or Coronado right now, the water you're looking at is not safe to touch.

This is, by any reasonable measure, the longest-running public health crisis in the United States. And California has treated it, for most of its history, like somebody else's problem.

How We Got Here

The Tijuana River runs 120 miles north from Baja California, through the heart of one of Mexico's fastest-growing cities, and across the U.S.-Mexico border before emptying into the Pacific Ocean at Imperial Beach. In an ideal world, Tijuana's wastewater would be captured, treated, and discharged safely south of the border before it ever reaches California. In reality, the treatment infrastructure on both sides of the border is inadequate, chronically underfunded, and overwhelmed — especially during rain events.

When it rains hard in Tijuana, hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage, industrial runoff, trash, and sediment surge north into California. The water carries more than 170 chemicals including arsenic, cadmium, DDT, and PCBs. Surfers have been hospitalized with MRSA. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents who work in the valley have developed rashes, infections, and in some cases necrotizing fasciitis — flesh-eating bacteria. Navy SEALs training at Coronado have gotten gastrointestinal illness after exercises in the ocean. Kids in South Bay schools are breathing hydrogen sulfide gas — the rotten egg smell that signals dangerous air quality — on their walks to school in the morning.

Just this month, a Mexican wastewater pipeline collapsed for the second time in recent weeks, sending millions more gallons of sewage toward the Pacific. Coronado Beach was closed. Again. The ocean from Imperial Beach to the pier — five full miles of coastline — remains off-limits to anyone who wants to enter the water.

What's Being Done

To be fair, there has been real movement in recent years. The federal government has dedicated $653 million to infrastructure repairs. Mexico completed upgrades to the Punta Bandera Wastewater Treatment Plant in April of last year. The South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant expansion has been fast-tracked. Projects currently under construction will prevent an estimated 5 million gallons per day of sewage from entering the river, with another project designed to divert 10 million additional gallons per day of treated effluent away from the river entirely.

Chula Vista declared a local state of emergency. San Diego County has distributed 12,000 air purifiers to residents near the river. State legislation is working through Sacramento to tighten air quality standards and free up Proposition 4 climate bond money to fix the Saturn Boulevard hot spot — a section where contaminated water aersolizes hydrogen sulfide and sprays it directly into the air over nearby homes.

This is progress. But it is 93 years too late and still not enough.

What Should Actually Happen

California needs to stop treating this as a federal problem and a Mexican problem and start treating it as its own emergency. Here is what that looks like in practice.

First, the state needs to put serious money — not Proposition bond money that takes years to deploy, but emergency appropriations — directly into expanding treatment capacity on the U.S. side of the border. The International Boundary and Water Commission cannot be the only entity responsible for this. California has a $300 billion economy. It can fund a sewage treatment plant.

Second, California needs to use its considerable diplomatic and economic leverage with Mexico. The maquiladora economy along the border — the factories that produce goods for American consumers — depends on California markets and California infrastructure. That is leverage. Use it to demand that Tijuana's water treatment infrastructure be brought to a standard that does not poison the Pacific Ocean.

Third, there needs to be real accountability for the agencies that have failed here. The International Boundary and Water Commission was sued in 2018 by Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, the Port of San Diego, and the Surfrider Foundation for violating the Clean Water Act. They settled in 2023. The settlement produced promises. The pipeline collapsed twice this year alone.

The surfers at Imperial Beach have been waiting since 1933. Navy SEALs are getting sick. Kids are breathing poison on the way to school. California can fix this. The question is whether it has the political will to stop pointing fingers across the border and start writing the checks.